Pierre Bourdieu (August 1, 1930 – January 23, 2002) was an acclaimed French sociologist and writer known for his outspoken political views and public engagement. One of the principal players in French intellectual life, Bourdieu became the "intellectual reference" for movements opposed to neo-liberalism and globalisation that developed in France and elsewhere during the 1990s. His thought exerted an immediate and important ongoing influence in the social sciences, particularly in France, though his rigorous analytical methods were criticized for their deterministic vision. He used methods drawn from a wide range of disciplines: from philosophy and literary theory to sociology and anthropology. He is best known for his book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, in which he argues that judgments of taste are related to social position. Relatedly and more generally, he combined both theory and verifiable facts in an attempt to reconcile difficulties such as how to understand the subject within objective structures. In the process, he tried to reconcile the influences of both the social background and "free choice" on the individual (see structure and agency). (via Wikipedia)

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About Pierre Bourdieu

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Place of Death: Paris, France

Region: Western sociology

Name: Bourdieu, Pierre
Pierre Bourdieu

Influenced: Michel de Certeau Loïc Wacquant France Winddance Twine Howard Winant

Birthplace: Denguin, France

Period: 20th-century sociology

Known for: Cultural capital "Field" Habitus
Symbolic capital Symbolic violence
Illusio Reflexivity Social capital

School/Tradition: Genetic structuralism

Influenced By: Veblen Lévi-Strauss
Bachelard Canguilhem Durkheim
Elias Husserl Merleau-Ponty
Goffman Berger
Pascal Saussure Marx Weber

Birth Date: Aug 1, 1930

Death Date: Jan 23, 2002

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