Bourdieu was educated at the lycée in

Pau, before moving to the Lycée Louis-

le-Grand in Paris, from which he gained
entrance to the Ecole Normale
Supérieure. Bourdieu studied philosophy
with Louis Althusser in Paris at the École
Normale Supérieure. After getting his
agrégation Bourdieu worked as a lycée
teacher at Moulins from 1955 to 1958
when he then took a post as lecturer in
Algiers.[3] During the Algerian War in
1958-1962, Bourdieu undertook
ethnographic research into the clash
through a study of the Kabyle peoples, of
the Berbers laying the groundwork for his
anthropological reputation.
In 1960 Bourdieu returned to the
University of Paris before gaining a
teaching position at the University of Lille
where he remained until 1964. From
1964 onwards Bourdieu held the position
of Director of Studies at the École
Pratique des Hautes Études (the future
École des Hautes Études en Sciences
Sociales), in the VIe section, and from
1981, the Chair of Sociology at the
Collège de France, in the VIe section
(held before him by Raymond Aron and
Maurice Halbwachs). In 1968, he took
over the Centre de Sociologie
Européenne, the research center that
Aron had founded, which he directed
until his death.
In 1975, with the research group he had
formed at the Centre de Sociologie
Européenne, he launched the
interdisciplinary journal Actes de la
recherche en sciences sociales, with
which he sought to transform the
accepted canons of sociological
production while buttressing the scientific
rigor of sociology. In 1993 he was
honored with the "Médaille d'or du Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique"
(CNRS). In 1996, he received the
Goffman Prize from the University of
California, Berkeley and in 2001 the
Huxley Medal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute.[4] Bourdieu
died of cancer at the age of 71.
 Influences

Bourdieu's work is influenced by much

of traditional anthropology and
sociology which he undertook to
synthesize into his own theory. From
Max Weber he retained the importance
of domination and symbolic systems in
social life, as well as the idea of social
orders which would ultimately be
transformed by Bourdieu into a theory of
fields.
From Karl Marx, among other insights
he gained an understanding of 'society'
as the ensemble of social relationships:
"what exist in the social world are
relations – not interactions between
agents or intersubjective ties between
individuals, but objective relations
which exist 'independently of individual
consciousness and will'."[5] (grounded
in the mode and conditions of economic
production), and of the need to
dialectically develop social theory from
social practice.
From Émile Durkheim, finally, through
Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss,
Bourdieu inherited a certain structuralist
interpretation of the tendency of social
structures to reproduce themselves,
based on the analysis of symbolic
structures and forms of classification.
However, Bourdieu critically diverged
from Durkheimian analyses in
emphasizing the role of the social agent
in enacting, through the embodiment of
social structures, symbolic orders. He
furthermore emphasized that the
reproduction of social structures does not
operate according to a functionalist logic.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty and, through him, the
phenomenology of Edmund Husserl played an
essential part in the formulation of Bourdieu's
focus on the body, action, and practical
dispositions (which found their primary
manifestation in Bourdieu's theory of habitus).
Bourdieu was also influenced by Wittgenstein
(especially with regard to his work on rule-
following) stating that "Wittgenstein is probably
the philosopher who has helped me most at
moments of difficulty. He's a kind of saviour for
times of great intellectual distress". Bourdieu's
work is built upon the attempt to transcend a
series of oppositions which characterized the
social sciences (subjectivism/objectivism,
micro/macro, freedom/determinism). In
particular he did this through conceptual
innovations. The concepts of habitus, capital,
and field were conceived, indeed, with the
intention to abolish such oppositions.
 Bourdieu as Public Intellectual
During the 1990s Bourdieu became more and more
involved in political debate, turning himself into one
of the most important public faces of intellectuality in
France. While a fierce critic of neoliberalism,
Bourdieu was also critical of the "total intellectual"
role played by Sartre, and he dismissed Sartre's
attempts within the political sphere of France as
"irresponsible" and "opportunistic."[8] Bourdieu saw
sociology not as a form of "intellectual
entertainment" but as a serious discipline of a
scientific nature. The paradox between Bourdieu's
earlier writings against using sociology for political
activism and his later launch into the role of a public
intellectual involved some highly "visible political
statements"[8] asking whether the role of the
academic, in this case the sociologist, is preparation
for life as a public intellectual, especially when
considering the political implications of Bourdieu's
work in the public domain.
2. Bourdieu’s Concept of Capitals

2.1 Preliminary Remarks

 Bourdieu argues that all action is
interest-oriented. Action is a strategy that
attempts to maximize material and
symbolic advantage. He sees individual
interests as defined by an actor’s position
within the social hierarchy.
 This action as interest-oriented is pre-
reflective and occurs through time. He
thinks of those interests as embodied
dispositions of actors that operate at an
implicit or taken-for-granted level.
 Viewing action as interest oriented, it
consequently aims at accumulation of capital.
Resources are conceptualized as capital
when it operates as “a social relation of power
 Bourdieu identify four generic types of
capital, namely:
1. economic capital (money or property)
2. cultural capital (cultural goods and
services including educational credentials)
3. social capital (acquaintances and
networks), and
4. symbolic capital (legitimation).
2.2 The Capitals
 The unequal distribution of capitals result into
violence and domination. Bourdieu’s focus is on the
role that cultural processes, producers, and
institutions play in maintaining inequality in
contemporary societies.
 Bourdieu argues that all symbolic systems such as
art, religion, science, or language itself
simultaneously perform three interrelated but distinct
functions:
1. Cognition
2. Communication
3. Social Differentiation.
On one hand, symbolic systems exercise cognitive
function when it function as “structuring structures” –
as a means for ordering and understanding the social
world.
 Dominant symbolic systems provide
integration for dominant groups,
distinctions and hierarchies for ranking
groups, and legitimation of social ranking
by encouraging the dominated to accept
the existing hierarchies of social
distinction.
 Hence, symbolic systems also fulfill a
political function. With these functions
Bourdieu develops a sociology of symbolic
forms, a theory of symbolic violence and
capital that overlap and interpenetrate one
another.
 Bourdieu adopted binary opposition as a
building block in his theory of symbolic
power. He believes that symbolic systems
are classification systems built upon the
fundamental logic of inclusion and
exclusion.
As such, all symbolic systems follow
classification logic of dividing and grouping
items into opposing classes and hence
generate meanings through binary logic.
This logic consequently builds an ordered
set of basic dichotomous distinctions, such
as dominant/dominated, good/bad,
high/low, right/wrong, that operate as
“primitive classifications” underlining all
mental activities.
 Bourdieu adopted binary opposition as a
building block in his theory of symbolic
power. He believes that symbolic systems
are classification systems built upon the
fundamental logic of inclusion and exclusion.
 As such, all symbolic systems follow
classification logic of dividing and grouping
items into opposing classes and hence
generate meanings through binary logic.
 This logic consequently builds an ordered
set of basic dichotomous distinctions, such
as dominant/dominated, good/bad, high/low,
right/wrong, that operate as “primitive
classifications” underlining all mental
activities.
 Moreover, cognitive structures which
social agents implement in their knowledge
of the social world are internalized,
embodied social structures.
 This means that the social world is also
classified into paired opposition. Binary logic
therefore determines our mode of
apprehending the social world.
 It predisposes us to organize the social
world according to the same logic of polarity
and thus produce social as well as cognitive
distinctions.
 Bourdieu provides an example of this when
he explains that not everyone could smash a
bottle into the ship and name it. In order then
to name a ship and make it legitimate a person
must have the ability to name it. He must be
the captain or the owner of the ship, otherwise
naming it will be nonsense.
 12. The capacity to “name” something
Bourdieu understands this as “symbolic
violence.” Symbolic violence is the capacity to
impose the means for comprehending and
adapting to the social world by representing
economic and political power in disguised
forms
 Bourdieu stresses how the dominated
accept as legitimate their condition of
domination. He called this “Misrecognition”.
Misrecognition is tied up with Bourdieu’s
strong claim that all actions are interested.
 The misperception of disinterested
character legitimizes the reproduction of the
social order. The dominated fails to sense the
social elements or practices that control them.
2.3 Habitus
 As mentioned before Bourdieu regards action
as interest oriented or as a strategy. By strategy
he does not mean conscious choice of action or
rational calculation. These actions are like
cultural unconscious,” “habit-forming force,” “set
of basic, deeply interiorized master-patterns,”
or “mental habits.”
These “habits” are transmitted by institutions,
practices, and social relations that
function as a “habit-forming force” that generate
schemes of thought and action.
 It tends to shape individual action so that
existing opportunity structures are perpetuated.
 It legitimates economic and social
inequality by providing a practical and
taken-for-granted acceptance of the
fundamental conditions of existence.
Habitus therefore is “necessity made into
virtue.”
 The dispositions of habitus represent
master patterns of behavioral style that
cut across cognitive, normative, and
corporeal dimension of human action.
They find expression in language
nonverbal communication, tastes,
values, perceptions, and modes of
reasoning
The function of habitus as a “structuring
structure” lies in Bourdieu’s emphasis of
collective basis of habitus, stressing that
individuals who internalize similar life chances
share the same habitus.
 It is possible that people who occupy the
same class have the same perception on
looking to the society.
 Moreover, habitus entails that behaviors,
expectations, and aspirations of individuals are
unconsciously patterned to what his class
regard as proper
 Habitus is fairly resistant to change