Bourdieu: A Critical Reader

by Richard Shusterman (Editor)

Overview

This Critical Reader provides a new perspective on the work of France's foremost social theorist Pierre Bourdieu, by examining its philosophical import and promoting a fruitful dialogue between Bourdieu and philosophers in the English-speaking world.

The contributors include leading philosophers who critically assess Bourdieu's philosophical theories and their significance from diverse philosophical perspectives to reveal which dimensions of his thought are the most useful for philosophy today. These discussions also raise important questions about the current institutional limits of philosophy and how those limits may be overcome through a more robust alliance with the social sciences and the practical social world.

The contributions cover Bourdieu's use of central figures in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition; his relationship to analytical philosophy and pragmatism through his concept of habitus; his position in twentieth-century continental philosophy; the political dimension of his work; the function and limits of his notion of "the field"; and the relation of his explanatory models to new directions in the philosophy of science. The book also discusses some of his most recent writing not yet translated into English, and it concludes with a chapter by Bourdieu in which he analyses the diverse structural problems and the transformations involved in importing intellectual ideas from one national field to another. The volume also offers a specially prepared comprehensive bibliography of Bourdieu's publications in French and English from 1958 to 1998.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780631188186
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	08/25/1999
Series:	Blackwell Critical Reader , #1
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.07(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.82(d)

About the Author

Richard Shusterman is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Temple University, Philadelphia, and Directeur de Programme at the Collège International de Philosophie, Paris. Educated in Jerusalem and Oxford, he was a Fulbright Professor of Philosophy in Berlin. His books include Analytic Aesthetics (1989), Pragmatist Aesthetics (1992), Sous L'interprétation (1994) and Practicing Philosophy (1997).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Bourdieu as Philosopher: Richard Shusterman.

1."Bourdieu and Anglo-American Philosophy": Richard Shusterman.

2."To follow a Rule": Richard Schusterman.

3."Rules, Dispositions and the Habitus": Charles Taylor.

4."Pierre Bourdieu: Habitus and the Logic of Practice": Joseph Margolis.

5."Can there be a Science of Existential Stucture and Social Meaning?": Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow.

6."Theory in Practice": Louis Pinto.

7."Peformativity's Social Magic": Judith Butler.

8."Practical Reason and Cultural Constraint: Agency in Bourdieu's Theory of Practice": James Bohman.

9."A (neo) American in Paris: Bourdieu, Mead and Pragmatism": Mitchell Aboulafia.

10."Bourdieu Noveau": Bill Earle.

11."Bourdieuean Dynamics: The American Middle-Class Self-Constructs": Chuck Dyke.

12."Bourdieu on Art: Field and Individual": Arthur Danto.

13."The Social Conditions of the International Circulation of Ideas": Pierre Bourdieu.

Index.

What People are Saying About This

David Rasmussen

David Rasmussen, Professor of Philosophy, Boston College

Richard Shusterman has assembled an extraordinary group of scholars to produce a first rate commentary on Pierre Bordieu, recommended reading for those who wish to engage in the very important work of Pierre Bordieu, both critically and constructively.

David Hoy

David Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Cruz

Blackwell's Critical Readers have become the benchmark of accessible and substantive engagements with the most prominent theorists of our time. Richard Shusterman's Bourdieu volume is an admirable addition to that series. The lucid introduction and trenchant essays provide the general audience with an excellent guide through the intricacies of Bourdieu's writings. At the same time, it raises crucial questions, posed by leading philosophers, about Bordieu's reflexive social theory and sociological practice.