Bourdieu and Marx: Practices of Critique

by Gabriella Paolucci (Editor)

Overview

This new book gathers together essays concerning the strategic modes of appropriation that Bourdieu practiced with regard to Marx, together with their various outcomes. It is especially devoted to the practice of critique that both thinkers exercised vigilantly throughout their careers, as this is the terrain on which we can best illuminate the debt that Bourdieu acknowledged to Marx. Ongoing dialogue with the entire body of Marxian critique is a constant in Bourdieu's writings. This is most clearly evidenced by the adoption of a critical perspective on the social world that denotes a massive Marxian presence. It is reinforced by the repeated references to Marx’s texts that the sociologist scatters throughout his works. Indeed, in the interlinked set of critiques underpinning the architecture of his work, in the plethora of questions he raises, and in the scientific practice he adopts, Bourdieu attaches himself to the Marxian model — notwithstanding his polemical remarks andhis own deviations, or, we might even say, by virtue of them. The book is divided into three interconnected sections for ease of access: critique of domination, critique of economic practices and theories, and critique of ideology. As the first volume in English to explore the relationship between Bourdieu and Marx, this book is vital reading for students and scholars of social and anthropological theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031062919
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	09/30/2022
Series:	Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
Edition description:	1st ed. 2022
Pages:	341
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Gabriella Paolucci is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Florence, Italy. Her research interests include time uses and experience, urban spaces, security policies, symbolic violence and State, and social theory, particularly with reference to Marx, Rawls, Sartre, Heller, Foucault, Bourdieu. Among her publications on Pierre Bourdieu are: Bourdieu dopo Bourdieu (ed.), Turin, 2009; Introduzione a Bourdieu, Bari, 2011; “Key Concepts” and “The State and Economics” in Re-Thinking Economics: Exploring the Work of Pierre Bourdieu (eds. A. Cristoforou and M Lainé), London, 2015; Bourdieu & Marx: Pratiche della critica (ed.), Milan, 2018; and numerous articles on social sciences journals.

Table of Contents

1.Introduction.Heirs: Bourdieu, Marx and Ourselves.- 2.Domination: Practicing Critique Marx/Bourdieu: between Critical Sociology and Philosophy of Emancipation.- 3.The Emancipation Enigma. Logic of Practice and Practice of Logic.- 4.Bourdieu on the State. Beyond Marx?.- 5.The State’s Monopolization of Violence and Decivilizing spurts: Approaches from Marx, Bourdieu, and Elias.- 6. Inheriting Critique of Economic Practices and Theories Bourdieu, Marx and Economics.- 7.Practice and Form. Criticizing Economics with Marx and Bourdieu.- 8.Does Bourdieu “Extend” Marx’s Concept of Capital?.- 9.On Bourdieu’s Use of the Marxian Notion of “Capital”.- 10.Intellectual Field: Interpreting Critique of Ideology Poverty of Philosophy: Marx Meets Bourdieu.- 11.The Juridical Field in Bourdieu, between Marx, Althusser and Thompson.- 12.Bourdieu’s Lesson: Marx vs. Althusser?

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This extremely welcome new collection is, remarkably, the first book length study – at least in the anglophone context – to reflect in detail on Bourdieu’s engagement with Marx. Such a project feels especially timely – indeed, long overdue – in this period of accelerating social crises. Resisting the temptation to create a mere itinerary of intellectual connections, or to measure one thinker against the other, the volume coheres around a much more urgent and reflexive set of concerns. These centre, in particular, on the practice of critique, understood, as Prof Paolucci puts it in her introduction to the volume, as ‘the terrain on which we can best illuminate the debt that Bourdieu wished to acknowledge to Marx’. In this sense the volume extends to its consideration of both writers, and to its consideration of their relationship, exactly those commitments to which they enjoined us: a refusal to preserve ideas in aspic; a concern to think through the interweaving of material and symbolic struggles; and, above all, the urgent possibility of defamiliarizing the social world." (Andrew Smith, Professor of Sociology, University of Glasgow, GB)

"Bourdieu's sociological work has positively developed a thought that broadens, not contradicts, the themes and horizons of Marx's work. This text, with its wealth of in-depth essays, shows very well how the categories of 'cultural capital' and 'symbolic violence' integrate potentialities and values that are already immanent but not explicit in the purely economic conception of 'the capital'." (Roberto Finelli, Professor of the History of Philosophy, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy)