Table of Contents

Main Points

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Key Figures

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)

     Pierre Bourdieu was French social scientist born in 1930 to a family of modest means in a province in southwestern France (Moore, 322). He obtained his degree in philosophy from Ecole Normal Superiere. Shortly after, Bourdieu was sent to Algeria for his military service in 1955 (Moore, 322). He also conducted research and taught at the University of Algiers. In addition to his stay there, Bourdieu carried many extensive fieldwork and surveys there (Wacquant 552). Some of his research consisted among the rural Kabyle and with Berber-speaking migrants to Algiers (Moore 322).  Bourdieu was strongly influenced by the relationship between culture and power in which led him to be involved in political efforts ( Moore, 323). However, in 1960, Bourdieu moved back to Paris because of the procolonial Algiers forcing him to flee. This was because he was classified as a certain type of ‘liberal’, he was under the threat of death (Wacquant 552). In Paris at the L’Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes, he organized a group of scholars examining European educational systems (322). Bourdieu at this time also continued to analyze field data collected during sojourns in rural and urban Algeria until 1964.  Around 1970’s Bourdieu had slowly established his position in French academia through streams of publications. Some books that he wrote were Distinction (1979/1984) and The Logic of Practice (1980/1990) that propelled Bourdieu to become the chair of sociology at the College of France in 1981. (Wacquant 553).  Boudieu continued to write books and publish articles from his perspectives of intellectual fields such as art history, educational research, cultural studies and philosophy until he died in 2002 of cancer. By the end of his death, he had written forty five books and 500 articles (Moore 334).

     Bourdieu’s work contributed and was very influential to anthropology through his development of the theory of practice. He wrote two books, Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) and The Logic of Practice (1990) that really explains and elaborates what the concept of the theory of practice (Moore 325). Bourdieu explained the theory of practice by arguing that culture is the exclusive product neither of free will not of underlying principles but is actively constructed by social actors from cultural dispositions and structured by previous events (Moore 321). Along the theory practice, Bourdieu introduced the terms of doxa, habitus and practice to help comprehend the rules that underlie social behavior (Moore 329).

Sherry Ortner

Key Texts

Outline of a Theory of Practice by Pierre Bordieu

Practice theory seeks to find the context of events that a structuralist theory is unable to address and/or explain. Pierre Bordieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice is centralized on habitus, unconscious behavior that is constructed and limited by an individual's previous experiences, or as Bordieu defines it "spontaneity without consciousness or will" (56).  In direct contrast to structuralism, practice theory believes social structures to be set forth and defined by the action's of the people, in particular habitus. He theorizes that, to an extent, structures also influence one's habitus, but only in regards to social "norms" that have already been set fourth by society. In this respect, habitus and institutionalization coexist in self-perpetuating cycles.

Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power and the Acting Subject by Sherry Ortner 

Sherry Ortner’s Anthropology and Social Theory draws on Practice Theory to offer solutions to modern problems. On page 3 of the book she writes that Practice Theory suggests restoring "the actor to the social process without losing sight of the larger structures that constrain (but also enable) social action". In this book Ortner rethinks key concepts of culture, agency and subjectivity in order to apply them to anthropology in the twenty-first century. The book is comprised of seven essays, both of interpretive and theoretical nature. She argues that the concept of culture needs to be reconfigured and suggests applying elements of Practice Theory in order to do this. She stresses the notion of human agency and demonstrates how social theories must build upon one another in order to be relevant in modern contexts. 

Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis by Anthony Gidden 



Critiques

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