Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action - Softcover

Bourdieu, Pierre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804733635 ISBN 13: 9780804733632

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Do social classes really exist? Is disinterested action really possible? What do the family, the church, and the intellectual world have in common? Can morality be founded on hypocrisy? What is the "subject" of action? In this new volume, one of France's foremost social thinkers of our time responds to these major questions and to others, thus tracing the outlines of a work that could be called "Pierre Bourdieu by himself." In these texts, the author tries to go to the essential, that is, the most elementary and fundamental, questions. He thereby explains the philosophical principles that have led to his social science research and the idea of the human that guides his choices there. With the lucidity allowed by retrospect, Bourdieu brings out the fundamental theories of his greatest books, notably Outline of a Theory of Practice and The Logic of Practice (Stanford, 1990), and, with an eye to the future, presents the first results of his most recent work on the state, the anthropological moorings of the economy, and male domination. Bourdieu's theory is both a philosophy of science dedicated to revealing the objective relations that shape and underpin social life, and a philosophy of action that takes account of agents' dispositions as well as the structured situations in which they act. This philosophy of action is condensed in a small number of key concepts―habitus, field, capital―and it is defined by the two-way relationship between the objective structures of social fields and the incorporated structures of the habitus. All in all, this book should be an indispensable introduction to Bourdieu's work, not only to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, political science, and philosophy, but throughout the social sciences and humanities generally.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In this new volume Pierre Bourdieu - one of the foremost social thinkers of our time - clarifies and elaborates the most fundamental characteristics of his theoretical approach.

Bourdieu's theory is both a relational philosophy of science dedicated to revealing the objective relations which shape and underpin social life, and a philosophy of action which takes account of agents' dispositions as well as the structured situations in which they act. This philosophy of action is condensed in a small number of key concepts - habitus, field, capital - and it is defined by the two-way relationship between the objective structures of social fields and the incorporated structures of the habitus.

The key concepts and assumptions of Bourdieu's approach are exemplified in this volume through a variety of concrete analyses, from a discussion of the formation of the modern state to an account of the family as a site of social reproduction, from an analysis of the economy of symbolic goods to a reflection on the social conditions of political morality.

An excellent and accessible introduction to the work of Bourdieu, Practical Reason will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, politics and philosophy, and throughout the social sciences and humanities generally.

About the Author:

Pierre Bourdieu is Professor of Sociology at the Collège de France. Stanford University Press has published nine other books by Bourdieu, most recently The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (1996).

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0804733635
• ISBN 13: 9780804733632
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 166