Pierre Bourdieu sociology. Bourdieu, Pierre

Pierre Bourdieu

Sociology of politics

Introduction to Social Analysis by Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu (b. 1930) is one of the greatest French sociologists of our time. His professional biography developed as a gradual ascent to the heights of the sociological Olympus, to his wide recognition by the scientific community and the formation of a separate sociological trend called the "Bourdieu school".

After graduating in 1955 from the Higher Pedagogical School (Ecole normale superieure) majoring in philosophy (Bourdieu's teachers were Althusser and Foucault), he began teaching philosophy at the Lycée in the small town of Moulins, but in 1958 he left for Algiers, where he continued teaching and began research as a sociologist. It is to Algeria, Algerian workers and small entrepreneurs that his first published sociological works are devoted: "Sociology of Algeria" (1961), "Labor and workers in Algeria"(1964). This was followed by a move, first to Lille, and then to Paris, where in 1964 Bourdieu became research director at the Higher Practical Research School (Ecole pratique de hautesétudes). In 1975 he founded and headed the Center for European Sociology, which has extensive international scientific contacts and programs, as well as the journal "Scholarly Works in the Social Sciences" (“Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales”), which is currently, along with the French sociological journal ("Revue française de sociologie"), one of the leading sociological journals in France.

The most important step towards recognition of the merits of Pierre Bourdieu was his election in 1981 as a full member of the French Academy and his receipt of the honorary post of head of the department of sociology at the College de France. Currently, Bourdieu is the author of 26 monographs and dozens of articles published in major scientific journals in France and other countries. His works are translated into all European languages and have a wide resonance in the international scientific community.

General characteristics of the sociological concept of P. Bourdieu

The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu is deeply critical and reflective. His dialectical and sometimes paradoxical thinking is aimed at criticizing not only the social or political reality of the period being lived through, but also sociology itself as a tool for understanding the social world. That is why the sociology of sociology occupies a large place in the works of Bourdieu. Starting with his first books: "The Sociology of Algeria" ( Sociologie de l "Algerie")(1961) "Pedagogical attitude and communication" ( "Rappof pédagogique et Communication") (1965),"The craft of a sociologist" ( "Le Métier de sociologue")(1968) and ending with one and the last - "Answers" ("Reponses")(1992), Pierre Bourdieu constantly analyzes the ontological and social status of sociology in modern society, freedom and predestination in choosing the subject and object of research, independence and political engagement of sociologists.

Drawing the attention of sociologists to the need to apply sociological analysis to sociology itself as one of the areas of the social universe, subject to the same laws as any other area, Bourdieu notes that the activity of a sociologist is guided not only by the goals of cognition, but also by the struggle for one's own position in the scientific community. environment. “A large part of orthodox sociological work,” he writes, “owes its immediate social success to the fact that they responded to a dominant order, often reduced to an order for tools to rationalize governance and domination, or to a “scientific” legitimization of the spontaneous sociology of the dominant.”

Bourdieu is characterized by a deep disregard for interdisciplinary division, which imposes restrictions both on the subject of research and on the methods used. His research combines approaches and techniques from the field of anthropology, history, linguistics, political sciences, philosophy, aesthetics, which he fruitfully applies to the study of such diverse sociological objects as: the peasantry, art, unemployment, the education system, law, science, literature, marriage. - kindred unions, classes, religion, politics, sports, language, housing, intellectuals and the state "top", etc.

When a distinction is drawn between empirical sociology and theoretical sociology, one usually says that empirical sociology studies real facts and phenomena interpreted within the framework of an abstract model, which is theoretical sociology.

Empirical sociology, based on concrete data, a priori integrated into the social reality it observes, while theoretical sociology in its reasoning tries to take a certain objective “super-reflexive” position, located, as it were, above society. Such a division into empirical and theoretical sociology is absolutely inapplicable to the work of Bourdieu. Rejecting the "non-practical" strategy of theoretical research not involved in social life as "observation of the observer", the author builds his works as a person whose interests are invested in the reality he studies. Therefore, the main thing for Bourdieu is to fix the result produced by the situation of observation on the observation itself. This means a decisive break with the tradition that the theorist "has nothing to do with social reality except to explain it."

The departure from such a “non-invested in social life” strategy of research means, firstly, the explication of the fact that a sociologist cannot occupy a certain unique, distinguished position from which he “sees everything” and whose entire interest is reduced only to a sociological explanation; secondly, the sociologist must move from an external (theoretical) and disinterested understanding of the practices of agents to a practical and directly interested understanding.

“The sociologist opposes the doxosophist by calling into question things that seem obvious ... This deeply shocks the doxosophists, who see a political bias in the fact of refusing to submit, deeply political, expressed in the unconscious acceptance of common places in the Aristotelian sense of the word: concepts or theses that argue , but about which they do not argue.

The logic of Bourdieu's research is fundamentally opposed to pure theorizing: as a "practical" sociologist and social critic, he advocates practical thought as opposed to "pure" thought or "theoretical theory." He repeatedly emphasizes in his books that theoretical definitions have no value in themselves unless they can be made to work in empirical research.

Dialectics of the social agent

Introducing agent in contrast to the subject and the individual, Bourdieu seeks to disassociate himself from the structuralist and phenomenological approaches to the study of social reality. He emphasizes that the concept of "subject" is used in widespread ideas about "models", "structures", "rules", when the researcher, as it were, takes an objectivist point of view, seeing in the subject a puppet controlled by the structure, and deprives him of his own activity. . In this case, the subject is considered as one who implements a conscious purposeful practice, obeying a certain rule. Bourdieu's agents, on the other hand, "are not automata tuned like clockwork in accordance with the laws of mechanics, which they do not know." Agents carry out strategies - peculiar systems of practice, driven by a goal, but not consciously directed by this goal. Bourdieu proposes, as a basis for explaining the practice of agents, not a theoretical concept constructed in order to present this practice as “reasonable” or, even worse, “rational”, but describes the very logic of practice through such phenomena as practical feeling, habitus, strategies. behavior.

One of the basic concepts of Pierre Bourdieu's sociological concept is the concept of habitus, which allows him to overcome the limitations and superficiality of the structural approach and the excessive psychologism of the phenomenological one. Habitus - it is a system of dispositions that generates and structures the agent's practice and representations. It allows the agent to spontaneously navigate the social space and respond more or less adequately to events and situations. Behind this is a huge amount of work on education and upbringing in the process of socialization of the individual, on the assimilation of not only explicit, but also implicit principles of behavior in certain life situations. The interiorization of such life experience, often remaining unconscious, leads to the formation of the agent's readiness and inclination to respond, speak, feel, think in a certain way, and not in another way. Habitus, therefore, “is the product of the characterological structures of a certain class of conditions of existence, i.e., economic and social necessity and family ties, or, more precisely, purely family manifestations of this external necessity (in the form of a division of labor between the sexes, surrounding objects, types of consumption, relations between parents, prohibitions, worries, moral lessons, conflicts, taste, etc.)”.

Bourdieu's theory is essentially an attempt to synthesize structuralism and phenomenology. Among the works of Bourdieu: "Beginnings", "Sociology of Politics", "Social Space and Symbolic Power". P. Bourdieu suggested using two fundamental approaches simultaneously in the study of social realities. The first is structuralism, which he implements in the form of the principle of double structuring of social reality: a) in the social system there are objective structures that are independent of the consciousness and will of people that are able to stimulate certain actions and aspirations of people; b) the structures themselves are created by the social practices of agents. The second is constructivism, which assumes that people's actions, conditioned by life experience, the process of socialization and acquired predispositions to act in one way or another, which are a kind of matrix of social action, which "form the social agent as a truly practical operator of the construction of objects.

Habitus - an integral system of dispositions of perception, evaluation, classification and action, the result of experience and internalization of social structures by an individual, which is unconscious in nature. Introducing the concept of habitus, Bourdieu is trying to remove the sociology-traditional opposition between the social structure and personal practices of an individual: on the one hand, habitus is the internal schemes of perception, evaluation, classification and activity inherent in the individual, on the other hand, it is internalized social relations, assimilated and appropriated by social agents. Habitus ensures the reproduction of social institutions: the structure of the institution fits into the internal structure of the individual and is subsequently reproduced in his future practices.

The field is a subspace of social space, determined by a specific force - an ensemble of differences in active properties that determine its specificity, its difference from any other subspace. The field is a specific system of relations between various positions, structurally determined and largely independent of the physical existence of the individuals who occupy these positions.

Naturally, the agent's predisposition to one action or another largely depends on the means that they have at their disposal. In order to indicate the means by which agents can satisfy their interests, Bourdieu introduces the concept of capital. Capitals can be represented as equivalent to the concept of resources used by E. Giddens. economic capital represents a variety of economic resources that can be used by an agent - money, a variety of goods cultural capital includes resources of a cultural nature. This is, first of all, education, the authority of the educational institution that the individual graduated from, the demand for his certificates and diplomas in the labor market. social capital- means associated with an individual's belonging to a particular social group. Symbolic Capital- this is what is usually called name, prestige, reputation .. Almost all capitals have the ability to convert into each other.

Symbolic violence is defined as a power capable of imposing meanings and forcing them to recognize them as legitimate, hiding that it is based on power relations that have developed between groups or classes of a certain social formation. At the same time, symbolic violence adds its own, purely symbolic, power to the existing power relations. The most important way to implement the power of symbolic violence is the pedagogical influence carried out in the family and in pedagogical institutions of all levels.

Pierre Bourdieu(1930-2002) - contemporary French sociologist. Bourdieu calls his teaching "philosophy of action" because the concept of action is central to it.

Bourdieu's central problem is the relationship between cognition and action, which in research becomes the relationship between subject and object. He believes that all attempts at direct understanding mean the absolute position of the I of the observer and that objectification through structural analysis brings the alien closer, although outwardly it moves it away. The goal of knowledge for Bourdieu is understanding through objectification. Thus, the pre-logical logic of practical actions, such as rituals, cannot be understood by “getting used to” an observer burdened with rational logic, but will become more “tangible” when distanced and objectified.

Next to the phenomenological and objectivist methods of theoretical knowledge of the social world, he puts praxeological knowledge. Its purpose is not to discover objective structures as such, but "structured structures that are capable of acting as structuring structures". The concept of "double structuring" is the basis of Bourdieu's sociology, the essence of which is that social reality is structured, firstly, by social relations that are objectified in the distribution of various capitals, both tangible and intangible, and, secondly, people's ideas about social structures and the surrounding world as a whole, which have a reverse effect on the primary structuring.

Bourdieu's notion of practice is defined by the dialectic of objective structures and deeply internalized structures ("rootedness" in culture), and deeply internalized structures cannot be fully explained in terms of objective structures, but, conversely, objective structures cannot be deduced from the intentions of those acting in them.

Bourdieu's action is not directly determined by economic conditions. The actions of actors, according to Bourdieu, are motivated by interests, but the concept of interest itself is complex and ambiguous. It can be understood broadly - as an indication that any ultimate goal of an action can be considered as an interest if the actor pursues it to the detriment of someone else's interests. A narrower understanding of interest refers to the concepts of prestige, wealth or power. Bourdieu prefers this interpretation. For Bourdieu, the concept of "interest" denotes the desire for dominance, and he presents social life as a constant struggle for dominance over others. He is convinced of the unconscious nature of the attraction to dominance, although he gives many examples of “strategies” for moving towards dominance that look like purposeful and conscious actions (for example, the desire to invest in “educational capital” in order to ultimately receive economic profit).

The specificity of Bourdieu's analysis of the desire for dominance is the description of the types and forms of its implementation. To do this, he introduces two concepts - economic capital and cultural capital. The first of these concepts is straightforward: the rich are omnipotent. Giving culture the status of capital means that culture, like economic capital, brings benefits that are not limited to economic enrichment, even if it also takes place (for example, the concept of “profitability of a diploma”). Culture is, as Bourdieu defines it, "symbolic capital".

He sees economic conditions more as a "privilege" that allows the rich to do what is not available to the masses, who therefore feel deprived. Bourdieu speaks of the doubling of goods through their symbolic existence along with their economic existence (similar to the "doubling of the world" through concepts). In modern society, the ruling class dominates not only due to economic capital, but also symbolic; according to Bourdieu, intellectuals belong to the ruling class along with entrepreneurs. Signs of distinction (for example, titles, dress, language) through the conceptual association of "marked" in this way create at the same time differences between groups. The day's dominant symbolic capital represents the capital of trust, credit. Symbolic capital, like economic capital, gives power: "Power to effect the recognition of power."

The sociological concept of Bourdieu

The sociological concept of Bourdieu integrates theoretical and empirical sociology. He advocates practical thought as opposed to abstract "objective" theorizing, criticizes the claims of some sociologists to take a dedicated position "above the fight" and from there to give a theoretical explanation of real social processes. It is no coincidence that one of the main works of Bourdieu is entitled by him "Practical Sense".

Bourdieu's integrated approach requires the introduction of the concept of "agent" instead of "subject" or "individual". Thus, Bourdieu emphasizes the activity, independence of agents, who "are not automata, fine-tuned like clockwork in accordance with the laws of mechanics, which they do not know." Agents choose life strategies, in accordance with certain goals, but not directed by someone else's will.

The central concept of P. Bourdieu's sociology is the so-called habitus - “systems of stable and portable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles that generate and organize practices and ideas that can be objectively adapted to their purpose, however, they do not imply a conscious focus on it and the indispensable mastery of the necessary operations to achieve it. Of course, this definition cannot be called easy (the above passage gives a good idea of P. Bourdieu's style).

The most important achievement of P. Bourdieu is his theory of social space. According to Bourdieu, “First of all, sociology is a social topology. Thus, it is possible to depict the social world in the form of a multidimensional space built according to the principles of differentiation and distribution, formed by a set of active properties in the universe under consideration, i.e. properties capable of giving its owner strength and power in this universe. Agents and groups of agents are thus defined by their relative positions in this space."

In turn, the social space can be divided into different fields: political, economic, academic, etc. The total social capital that an individual has at his disposal is made up of his capitals in various fields. At the same time, social capital is capable of converting from one form to another, for example, a graduate of a prestigious university easily finds a well-paid job, and a successful entrepreneur can secure his election as a deputy.

P. Bourdieu pays great influence to the political applications of his theory, as well as to questions of “sociology”, professional qualities and citizenship of sociologists: “I would like sociologists to be always and in everything at the height of the enormous historical responsibility that fell to their lot, and that they always involve in their actions not only their moral authority, but also their intellectual competence.”

In defining and studying the essence of social relations, Bourdieu proposed using two fundamental approaches simultaneously:

1. 1) structuralism - in the social system there are objective structures that do not depend on the consciousness and will of people, but are able to stimulate one or another of their actions and aspirations;

2. 2) constructivism - the actions of people, due to life experience, the process of socialization, "form a social agent as a truly practical operator of constructing objects."

Bourdieu's theory is considered an integral sociological theory and is an attempt to overcome the contradictions between macro- and micro-analysis, agent and structure, which gives rise to the so-called "paired concepts" (eng. paired concepts). Bourdieu's theory is based, first of all, on the fundamental ideas of the classics, expressing two opposite approaches to defining the object of sociology: this is Marx's research program, the starting point of which is a broadly understood structure (socio-economic formation), and Weber's program, which proceeds from the concept social action. Insofar as the agent and the structure are connected dialectically, Bourdieu tries to remove the contradiction between them and introduces a number of his concepts.

Central to the sociological theory of Bourdieu are the concepts of "habitus" and "social space", through which the gap between macro- and microanalysis of social realities is overcome.

According to Bourdieu, the objective social environment produces habit- "a system of strong acquired predispositions"; in the future, they are used by individuals as initial attitudes that give rise to specific social practices of individuals.

social space is a logically conceivable construct, a kind of environment in which social relations are carried out. Social space is not a physical space, but it tends to be realized in it more or less fully and accurately. Social space can be described as a set of fields, specific homogeneous "sub-spaces" (for example, the field of literature, the economic field, etc.), power over which comes from the possession of scarce goods - capital. It is the distribution of various types of capital (economic, cultural, social, symbolic) in the social space that structures

Pierre Bourdieu(Fr. Pierre Bourdieu, August 1, 1930, France - January 23, 2002, Paris, France) - French sociologist, ethnologist, philosopher and political publicist, one of the most influential sociologists of the twentieth century. He is the author of thirty-five books and four hundred articles, which are highly regarded both in terms of theoretical and empirical research. At the same time, his work has been subjected to various criticisms, mainly for a deterministic vision of the social.

Since 1981 - Professor of Sociology at the College de France. In the 1990s, Pierre Bourdieu played a prominent role in the social and political life of France.

Bourdieu studied primarily the mechanisms of reproduction of social hierarchies. He emphasized the importance of cultural and symbolic factors of reproduction and criticized Marxist concepts of the primacy of the economy. According to Bourdieu, the capacity of agents in positions of power to impose their cultural and symbolic practices plays a key role in the reproduction of social relations of domination. Bourdieu introduced the concept of symbolic violence as coercion to recognize various forms of domination and ignorance of its mechanisms. Symbolic violence legitimizes social forms of domination.

According to Bourdieu, the social world in modern society is divided into special social areas - "social fields". The differentiation of social activity has led, in particular, to the formation of the field of art and the field of politics as certain types of activity. The fields have comparative autonomy in relation to society as a whole. Fields have their own hierarchy and dynamics due to the competitive struggle of social agents for a dominant position. Here Bourdieu's analysis coincides with the Marxist tradition in terms of the importance of struggle and conflict in the functioning of society. But for Bourdieu, conflicts are not reduced to conflicts between social classes, but unfold in a symbolic dimension in different social fields.

The nature of the social is determined by the difference that gives rise to social hierarchies. Following Pascal, Bourdieu believed that a person is driven primarily by a thirst for recognition of his human dignity; recognition is exclusively social in nature.

Bourdieu developed a theory of action centered on "habitus" - a concept that had a great influence on the social sciences. According to Bourdieu's theory, a small number of attitudes received as a result of socialization allows social agents to implement action strategies. These strategies are adapted to the needs of the social world, but are not realized by the agents.

Bourdieu's research is centered around key concepts: habitus as the principle of action of agents, the field as a space of fundamental social struggle, capital as a resource in the social field, symbolic violence as the main mechanism for asserting domination. All these concepts introduced and developed by Bourdieu are widely used in sociology and social anthropology.

Biography

Pierre Bourdieu, the only child in the family, was born in 1930 in the south-west of France in Dangen, a small village in the historical region of Béarn, in the western part of the Pyrenees-Atlantiques department. His father, a native of the small peasantry, was a sharecropper, and then worked as a postman, without leaving the rural environment. Bourdieu's mother was of a similar social background, although somewhat higher, her ancestors were small proprietors.

Studies

From 1941 to 1947, Bourdieu was an intern at the Lycée Louis-Bartoux in the town of Pau, he studied excellently. He was noticed by one of the teachers, a graduate of the Higher Normal School, who advised him to enroll in preparatory courses in the humanities at the elite Lycée Louis the Great in Paris in 1948.

In 1951, Bourdieu was admitted to the Higher Normal School, where Jacques Derrida and Louis Marin studied with him. In the post-war period in French philosophy, the phenomenological existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre had the greatest authority, which had a certain influence on Bourdieu and many representatives of his generation. Bourdieu, according to his memoirs, very early read "Being and Nothingness" by Sartre, a little later - the works of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He studied Bourdieu and the works of the young Karl Marx.

Many eminent scientists contributed to sociology, one of whom was Pierre Bourdieu. French citizen, born in 1930, philosopher, culturologist, author of the theoretical concept of social space, field, cultural and social capital. He believed that the place of the subject in determines the economic capital, which can be considered in terms of cultural, social and symbolic assets.

short biography

The biography of Pierre Bourdieu is full of various events. He took an active part in political transformations and studied a lot. The future sociologist was born in 1930 in Dangen (France). His father is a peasant, his mother's family are small proprietors. In 1941-1947. Pierre Bourdieu studied at the Lyceum Louis Barthou, where one of the teachers noticed him and advised him to enroll in the elite Lyceum of Louis the Great for a course in the humanities and elite sciences.

In 1951, Bourdieu was admitted to the High School, and Louis Marin studied with him. At this time, his philosophical and sociological worldview is formed. He is interested in the works of Sartre, Husserl, Marx, Merleau-Ponty. At school, together with Derrida and Maren, he founded the Committee for the Defense of Freedom. In 1953 he defended his diploma on Leibniz, in 1954 he passed the exam for the right to teach philosophy and began working on a dissertation on the temporal structures of emotional life.

From 1954 to 1955 works as a teacher in a secondary school. After he refused compulsory military service, he was transferred to Versailles, to the Army Psychological Service. At the end of 1955, Pierre was transferred to Algeria, where the war was going on, where he stayed for two years. During this time, he managed to start ethnological research, which he continued while working as an assistant at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Algiers in 1958-1960.

Back to France

The time spent in Algiers defined Bourdieu's career as a sociologist. He publishes several books on ethnology, in 1958 the work "Sociology of Algeria" was published, where Pierre Bourdieu analyzes the influence of colonialism on the destruction of the traditional way of life. After Algeria declared independence, Bourdieu wrote Labor and Workers in Algeria and The Crisis of Traditional Agriculture in Algeria. After completing his studies, he returns to France.

In 1960 he worked as chief secretary at the Center for European Sociology. In 1961, he received a teaching position at the University of Lille, where he worked until 1964. Pierre Bourdieu married Marie Brizard in 1962. In mid-1964, the French sociologist became deputy head of the Center for European Sociology, began to study cultural practices, to which he devoted the next 10 years.

In 1968 he founded his own Center for Sociology and Culture, where he studied social hierarchy and reproduction. Died in 1983.

Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu

Studying social reality, Bourdieu wanted to move away from the phenomenological and structuralist approaches. He does not use the concepts of subjects and objects, instead of them he introduces a new word "agent". Unlike subjects who obey certain rules, agents reproduce strategies - certain systems of practice that have a specific goal, but are not directed by the goal. To explain his concept of agents, Bourdieu introduces the concept of habitus.

Habitus is a system of strong predispositions acquired in the process of socialization that help the individual to function in a particular structure. This is a kind of system of dispositions that determines the activities and representations of individuals. Habitus is the product of history, producing individual and collective practices. Causes the presence in the actions of individuals of past experience, which is the guarantor of correct behavior. Habitus tends to generate generally accepted manners of behavior that are adapted to the logic of a particular field of activity - social space.

social space

Bourdieu believed that society should be considered as a structure in two forms. The first hypostasis is the reality of the first order, where the position of a person in society is determined by the distribution of material resources, prestige, values and other social benefits. The reality of the second order is the manners of behavior and thinking of individuals, which correspond to their position in society. Simply put, Bourdieu viewed social reality as a relationship between the physical and the subjective.

It is possible to allocate social and physical space - a field. The physical space is determined by the interconnection of the external parts that form it, the social space appears as a result of the implementation of various positions. The social field can consist of several fields, that is, a person can occupy several social positions.

Home according to Bourdieu is to identify hidden structures in the environment of the physical and social field. But this is only a small part of his research. No less interesting is the sociology of politics by Pierre Bourdieu.

Politics

Bourdieu also considered the state apparatus from the point of view. The main feature of the field is that agents and institutions fight according to the rules formulated in this space. They work hard and get different results. This is how elites and masses are formed. The political field has no components, it is a kind of map on which a game is played for access to capital. And every game has its own rules.

According to Pierre Bourdieu, society is not a structure, it is just the result of the actions of agents who take part in the game of the field.

Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu(1930-2002) - contemporary French sociologist. Bourdieu calls his teaching "philosophy of action" because the concept of action is central to it.

There are scientists whose work is very difficult to limit the rigid framework of some theoretical direction. The outstanding French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (born in 1930), who created a special sociological "Bourdieu school", undoubtedly belongs to such scientists. Bourdieu's research is actually interdisciplinary in nature, which is facilitated by the fundamental philosophical education he received (Bourdieu's teachers were L. Althusser and M. Foucault). The sociological concept of Bourdieu integrates theoretical and empirical sociology. He advocates practical thought as opposed to abstract "objective" theorizing, criticizes the claims of some sociologists to take a dedicated position "above the fight" and from there to give a theoretical explanation of real social processes. It is no coincidence that one of the main works of Bourdieu is entitled by him "Practical Sense". Bourdieu's integrated approach requires the introduction of the concept of "agent" instead of "subject" or "individual". Thus, Bourdieu emphasizes the activity, independence of agents, who "are not automata, fine-tuned like clockwork in accordance with the laws of mechanics, which they do not know." Agents choose life strategies, in accordance with certain goals, but not directed by someone else's will. The central concept of P. Bourdieu's sociology is the so-called habitus - “systems of stable and portable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles that generate and organize practices and ideas that can be objectively adapted to their purpose, however, they do not imply a conscious focus on it and the indispensable mastery of the necessary operations to achieve it.

Sociology of politics

Of course, this definition cannot be called easy (the above passage gives a good idea of P. Bourdieu's style). The most important achievement of P. Bourdieu is his theory of social space. According to Bourdieu, “First of all, sociology is a social topology. Thus, it is possible to depict the social world in the form of a multidimensional space built according to the principles of differentiation and distribution, formed by a set of active properties in the universe under consideration, i.e. properties capable of giving its owner strength and power in this universe. Agents and groups of agents are thus defined by their relative positions in this space." In turn, the social space can be divided into different fields: political, economic, academic, etc. The total social capital that an individual has at his disposal is made up of his capitals in various fields. At the same time, social capital is capable of converting from one form to another, for example, a graduate of a prestigious university easily finds a well-paid job, and a successful entrepreneur can secure his election as a deputy. P. Bourdieu pays great influence to the political applications of his theory, as well as to questions of “sociology”, professional qualities and citizenship of sociologists: “I would like sociologists to be always and in everything at the height of the enormous historical responsibility that fell to their lot, and that they always involve in their actions not only their moral authority, but also their intellectual competence.”

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS

BELARUSIAN STATE UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

Sociology of politics by Pierre Bourdieu

Course work

2nd year students

departments of sociology

distance learning

Anishchenko Yu.Yu.

Supervisor:

PhD in Philosophy

Associate Professor Grishchenko Zhanna Mikhailovna

MINSK 2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction. Positioning of Pierre Bourdieu in modern sociology

Chapter 1. The sociology of politics by Pierre Bourdieu is an independent sociological discipline

1.1 The main methodological criteria for the formation of an independent sociological discipline

1.2 Subject, object and categorical apparatus of the sociology of politics

1.3 Subject, object and categorical apparatus of the sociology of politics by Pierre Bourdieu

Political Patterns of Pierre Bourdieu

2.1. Delegation and political fetishism

2. 2 Public opinion does not exist

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction. Positioning of Pierre Bourdieu in modern

sociology

Pierre Bourdieu is a French sociologist, philosopher, culturologist - undoubtedly one of the most significant figures in modern sociology. He was born in a village on the border with Spain, in the family of a postal official. After graduating from the Higher Pedagogical School in 1955, he taught philosophy at the Lycée Moulin, in 1958 he left for Algeria, where he continued teaching and began sociological research. From Algiers he moved to Lille, and then to Paris, where in 1964 he became research director at the Higher Practical Research School. In 1975, he founded and headed the Center for European Sociology, as well as the journal "Scholarly Works in the Social Sciences", which, along with the French Journal of Sociology, is considered the leading sociological publication in France. In 1981 he was elected a full member of the French Academy and became head of the department of sociology at the College de France. His life is an attempt to combine the career of a sociologist and an intellectual practitioner.

His work evolved from philosophy to anthropology and then to sociology. The central ideas of his theoretical concept are social space, field, cultural and social capital, habitus. The ethical side of the doctrine and the desire to build a fair society based on republican values are of great importance. Many scholars note the enormous contribution of Bourdieu to the understanding of society. Bourdieu is characterized by a deep disregard for interdisciplinary divisions, which impose restrictions on the subject of research and on the methods used. His research combines approaches and techniques from the fields of anthropology, history, linguistics, political science, philosophy, aesthetics, which he applies to the study of such diverse sociological objects as: the peasantry, art, unemployment, the education system, law, science, literature, marriage. kindred unions, classes, religion, politics, sports, language, housing, intellectuals and the state "top".

The sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu is built around three main categories: "field" - "capital" - "habitus"; and includes many interrelated concepts that make it possible to refer to the analysis of a wide variety of social phenomena. The origin and formation of this approach, called "genetic structuralism", should be considered in the context of the intellectual and social situation in France, which determined the possibilities for the formation of Pierre Bourdieu as a scientist. In his student years in the social sciences, at first philosophy reigned supreme, and then anthropology received the greatest authority. Despite the fact that it was in France that sociology first became a university discipline and had a strong academic tradition, as a course of study at that time it was not properly developed and was considered a non-prestigious specialization. P. Bourdieu explains his choice in favor of sociology by the desire for seriousness and rigor, the desire to solve not abstract cognitive problems, but to analyze a really existing society and its real problems by means of social sciences. The departure of P. Bourdieu from philosophy was influenced, among other things, by the works of M. Merleau-Ponty "Humanism and Terror" (1947) and "The Adventures of Dialectics" (1955), in which an attempt was made to apply universal philosophical categories to the analysis of contemporary political phenomena.

In the fifties and sixties of the 20th century, three trends were most widely spread in French philosophy: phenomenological-existentialism, structuralism and Marxism. Many sociologists find inspiration for Bourdieu in the writings of K. Marx, M. Weber, E. Durkheim and E. Cassirer. Bourdieu was interested in many philosophical and sociological currents of the 20th century, but none completely satisfied him. In the book Pascal's Reflections, he consistently revealed his attitude to modern areas of philosophy and sociology, described the intellectual atmosphere in France in the middle of the 20th century, analyzed the similarities and differences of his position with the views of L. Althusser, L. Wittgenstein, G. Garfinkel, I. Hoffmann, J. Deleuze, E. Cassirer, K. Levi-strauss, T. Parsons, J.-P. Sartre, M. Foucault, J. Habermas and others. Deep assimilation, gap and overcoming - these are the main mechanisms that led Pierre Bourdieu to the formation of his own "synthetic" direction, later called "genetic structuralism". “With the help of structuralism, I want to say that in the social world itself, and not only in symbolism, language, myths, etc., there are objective structures that are independent of the consciousness and will of agents, capable of directing and suppressing their practices and ideas. With the help of constructivism, I want to show that there is a social genesis, on the one hand, of patterns of perception, thought and action, which are the constituent parts of what I call fields or groups, and what are usually called social classes.

The works of Pierre Bourdieu - 26 monographs and dozens of articles on the methodology of social cognition, the stratification of society, the sociology of power and politics, education, art and popular culture, ethnographic studies - have been translated into all European languages. By the strength of the impact, Pierre Bourdieu is compared with J.P. Sartre and is considered the greatest sociologist of our time.

Chapter 1. The sociology of politics by Pierre Bourdieu is an independent

sociological discipline

1.1 The main methodological criteria for the formation

independent sociological discipline

Special sociological disciplines are theories that are theoretical generalizations that explain the qualitative specifics of the development and functioning of a variety of social phenomena. Each special sociological theory has its own object and subject of study, its own approach to the study of this subject.

The formation and formation of an independent sociological discipline, a special theory means:

- discovery, formulation of specific patterns of development and functioning of a group of homogeneous phenomena and processes;

- discovery of social mechanisms of functioning of these phenomena and processes;

- development for the studied object (phenomenon, process, group, and so on) of its own system of categorical-conceptual apparatus, such a system that does not contradict the laws of development and functioning of the object as part of the whole.

Special theories are characterized by a high level of abstraction and allow one and the same object, one or another social community to be considered from a certain angle of view, to single out one or another “section” of the object being studied, its “level”, “side” that is of interest to the sociologist.

Special sociological disciplines are characterized by:

a) establishing objective relationships between the studied subject area and the integrity of the social system in the past, present and future;

b) identification of specific, characteristic for this subject area of internal connections and patterns.

Independent disciplines have broad interdisciplinary links with other branches of social science and other sciences. They are focused on the management and planning of social processes, as a rule, in the short term and in special, private areas of public life. The sociology of group behavior, social mobility, the sociology of the family, politics, sports, labor, economics, and so on - each of the identified varieties of sociological knowledge has its own layer of theoretical and empirical research. Therefore, each discipline has its own theoretical base and its own empirical material, corresponding to a certain region, collected and processed according to a certain methodology.

Thus, an independent sociological discipline is a concept that explains the functioning and development of particular social processes; the field of sociological knowledge, which has as its subject the study of the independent spheres of social life of certain types of social activity and social communities, the laws of their development and functioning.

1.2 Subject, object and categorical apparatus of sociology

politicians

For the sociology of politics, as an independent sociological discipline, it has its own subject, object, and conceptual and categorical apparatus.

The sociological concept of Bourdieu

The sociology of politics is characterized by a focus on the study of power, analysis of political processes from the standpoint of their perception and reflection in the minds and behavior of people. Zh. T. Toshchenko expressed this approach in “Political Sociology” as follows: how deeply, seriously, thoroughly people perceive political processes, how they relate to them and how much they intend to promote or resist them, gives the sociology of politics a qualitative certainty and distinguishes it from other political sciences.

CONCEPTS OF THE HABITUUS P. BOURDIER
V.A. Mikhailova(Moscow State University named after A. A. Kuleshov)

Scientific hands. S.N. Likhacheva ,

cand. sociological Sciences, Associate Professor
P. Bourdieu's concept of habitus is aimed at overcoming the one-sidedness and reductionism of rationalism and mechanism, objectivism and subjectivism. The dialectical view of the world he proposes, realized through a series of logically connected concepts - habitus, social space, structures, practice - has many attractive aspects. In addition, it is quite effectively implemented in empirical studies. In his "strategy of synthesis" P. Bourdieu proceeds from the social structure, moving towards the subject of action, which brings his approach closer to the theory of structuring by E. Giddens, created from the point of view of the opposite perspective.

One of the basic concepts of the sociological concept of Pierre Bourdieu is the concept of habitus, which allows him to overcome the limitations and superficiality of the structural approach and the excessive psychologism of the phenomenological approach. . Habit(habitus) - systems of strong acquired dispositions (dispositions), structured structures designed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles that give rise and organize practices and representations that are objectively adapted to achieve certain results, but do not imply conscious orientation these results and do not require special skill. Simply put, habitus is a system of dispositions that generates and structures the agent's practice and representations. Agents P. Bourdieu, however, “are not automata, debugged like clockwork in accordance with the laws of mechanics, which are unknown to them.” Agents carry out strategies - peculiar systems of practice, driven by a goal, but not consciously directed by this goal. P. Bourdieu offers as a basis for explaining the practice of agents not a theoretical concept, built in order to present this practice as “reasonable” or, even worse, “rational”, but describes the very logic of practice through such phenomena as practical feeling, habitus , strategies of behavior.

Habitus is formed gradually and, in stages, in the process of socialization of the individual. Initially, we can talk about the folding of the primary habitus in the family, then - the secondary one - in the process of implementing school education. Then, more and more new structures are included in the process of personality formation, and this means the appearance of other forms of habitus. The number of dispositions (predispositions) of the personality increases, the quality of habitus becomes more complicated.

Being the product of some type of objective regularity, habitus tends to produce "reasonable", "generally accepted" behaviors (and only them) that are possible within such regularity and that are most likely to be positively sanctioned, since they are objectively adapted to the logic characteristic of a certain field of activity, the objective future of which they anticipate. At the same time, it usually excludes all "extremes", that is, all those actions that would be sanctioned negatively, since they are incompatible with objective conditions. Behind this is a huge amount of work on education and upbringing in the process of socialization of the individual, on the assimilation of not only explicitly expressed, but also unexpressed, implied principles of behavior in certain life situations. The interiorization of such life experience, often remaining unconscious, leads to the formation of the agent's readiness and inclination to respond, speak, feel, think in a certain way, and not in another way. Habitus is thus “the product of the characterological structures of a certain class of conditions of existence, i. , relationships between parents, prohibitions, worries, moral lessons, conflicts, taste, etc.

Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu

P.)".

In the given characteristics of the habitus, P. Bourrier often uses the concept of practice. It has, like many categories used by the French sociologist, several aspects and meanings. practices- this is the content and result of the activity of agents. This refers to the social actions themselves, and the communications that arise between agents in connection with these actions, and the social forms "created" by practices. But not only. Practice, as P. Bourdieu often emphasized, is the implementation of social structures. The latter are the main reasons for practices. Thus, practices realize a kind of double structuring of social reality: first as a source of habitus, through it - a system of ideas, then - as its result - the very structure of real relations.

According to P. Bourdieu, the peculiarity of society is that the structures shaping it exist in two forms: firstly, as a “first-order reality”, given through the distribution of material resources and means of appropriating socially prestigious benefits and values (“types of capital” according to P. Bourdieu); secondly, as a “second-order reality” that exists in representations, in schemes of thinking and behavior, as a symbolic matrix of practical activity, behavior, thinking, emotional assessments and judgments of social agents. Thus, it is important to understand the relationship between physical and social space in the philosophy of P. Bourdieu.

Society as a “first-order reality” is considered in the aspect of social physics as an external objective structure, the nodes and joints of which can be observed, measured, “mapped”. The subjective point of view on society as a “second-order reality” suggests that the social world is “a contingent and time-consuming implementation of the activities of authorized social agents who continuously construct the social world through the practical organization of everyday life.” P. Bourdieu offers social praxeology for the analysis of social reality, which combines structural and constructivist (phenomenological) approaches. So, on the one hand, he distances himself from ordinary ideas in order to build objective structures (space of positions) and establish the distribution of various types of capital, through which external necessity is constituted, affecting the interactions and ideas of agents occupying these positions. On the other hand, he introduces the direct experience of agents in order to reveal the categories of unconscious perception and evaluation (disposition) that “from the inside” structure the agent's behavior and his ideas about the position he occupies.

The social space includes several fields, and an agent can occupy positions in several of them at the same time (these positions are in relation to homology with each other).

The field, according to P. Bourdieu, is a specific system of objective connections between various positions that are in alliance or in conflict, in competition or in cooperation, determined socially and largely independent of the physical existence of the individuals who occupy these positions.

The structure of the field is the state of the relationship of power between the agents or institutions involved in the struggle, where the distribution of specific capital accumulated during the previous struggle governs future strategies. This structure, which is represented by strategies aimed at its transformation, is itself at stake: the field is a place of struggle, having at stake the monopoly of legitimate violence that characterizes the field in question, that is, in the end, the preservation or change in the distribution of specific capital.

Bibliography:

Gromov, I.A. Western theoretical sociology / I.A. Gromov, A.Yu. Matskevich; ed. I.A. Gromov.-St. Petersburg, 1996.- 296 p.
Gronas, M. "Pure look" and the look of the practitioner: Pierre Bourdieu on culture / M. Gornas. - UFO - 2000 - No. 45. - 6-21 p.
Zborovsky, G.E. History of sociology / G.E. Zborovsky.-Moscow: Eksmo, 2004.-608 p.
Mauger, J. Sociological engagement // Poetics and Politics. Almanac of the Russian-French Center for Sociology and Philosophy of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. - Moscow: Institute of Experimental Sociology, 1999. - 124 p.

Coursework by discipline

"History of Sociology"

THE THEORY OF SOCIAL SPACE, FIELD AND HABITUS

P. BOURDIER

Introduction

1. Ideological and theoretical origins of Bourdieu's structuralist constructivism

2. The main features of the theory of social space P. Bourdieu

Conclusion

Bibliographic list

INTRODUCTION

Of great importance for understanding the features of social space is the teaching of the outstanding French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Many scholars note the enormous contribution of Bourdieu to the understanding of society. Bourdieu is characterized by a deep disregard for interdisciplinary divisions, which impose restrictions on the subject of research and on the methods used. His research combines approaches and techniques from the field of anthropology, history, linguistics, political science, philosophy, aesthetics, which he fruitfully applies to the study of various sociological objects.

The purpose of this work is to analyze and reveal the understanding of society in the sociology of Bourdieu. The tasks are:

1. Determine the origins of Bourdieu's structuralist constructivism.

2. To reveal the main features of the theory of social space P. Bourdieu

3. Consider the content of the concept of field and habitus P. Bourdieu.

The object of this course work is Bourdieu's structuralist constructivism, the subject is Bourdieu's theory of social space, field and habitus.

The theoretical main course work was the research of domestic and foreign scientists: Kravchenko S.A., Ritzera J., Shmatko N.A. The translated books and articles of Bourdieu were used as primary sources.

When writing the work, a concrete historical approach was used; logical and historical methods.

1. IDEA AND THEORETICAL ORIGINS OF BOURDIER'S STRUCTURALIST CONSTRUCTIVISM

P. Bourdieu began his creative activity in the 60s of the last century. Then the views of K. Marx were very popular, which influenced the nature of his work. However, later he departs from the theoretical and methodological tools of Marxism and turns to sociologists who were engaged in the study of ordinary social experience mainly through the prism of phenomenology. These are scientists such as E. Husserl, A. Schutz, M.

Pierre Bourdieu

Heidegger and others. The content of Bourdieu's works was also greatly influenced by the structuralists - K. Levi-Strauss, L. Althusser and others. As a result, Bourdieu began to develop an integral theory, which included the achievements of both phenomenology and structuralism. Structuralism, based on the ideas of not only the linguist F. de Saussure, but also the greatest classic of sociology E. Durkheim, still remains an essential feature of French social theorizing. P. Bourdieu's desire to critically analyze and overcome the "monopoly of the object" inherent in structuralism, his attention to the subject and action, manifested in the intention to create a synthetic concept of the subject and object, nevertheless has a strong structuralist "coloration". His direction of synthesis is closely connected with the structuralist and post-structuralist searches in the field of social sciences.P. Bourdieu suggested using two fundamental approaches simultaneously in the study of social realities. The first is structuralism, which he implements in the form of the principle of double structuring of social reality: a) in the social system there are objective structures that are independent of the consciousness and will of people that are able to stimulate certain actions and aspirations of people; b) the structures themselves are created by the social practices of agents.

The second is constructivism, which assumes that people's actions, conditioned by life experience, the process of socialization and acquired predispositions to act one way or another, which are a kind of social action matrices that "form a social agent as a truly practical operator of object construction." These methodological approaches, according to Bourdieu, make it possible to establish causal relationships between social phenomena in conditions of uneven distribution of social realities in space and time. Thus, social relations are distributed unevenly. In a certain place and at a certain time they can be very intense and vice versa. Similarly, agents enter into social relations unevenly. Finally, people have uneven access to capital, which also affects the nature of their social actions. Pierre Bourdieu's theory arose from a desire to overcome what the author considers to be a false opposition between objectivism and subjectivism, or, as he puts it, "an absurd enmity between the individual and society" . As Bourdieu writes, "the most fundamental stimulus guiding my creativity has been to overcome the opposition of objectivism/subjectivism." To the camp of objectivists, he ranks Durkheim with his study of social facts, the structuralism of Saussure, Levi-Strauss and structural Marxism. He criticizes these approaches for taking exclusively objective structures as the main subject of their consideration. In doing so, they ignore the social construction process by which actors perceive, think, and create these structures and then act upon them. Objectivists do not take into account either the activity or the role of social agents. Bourdieu prefers a structuralist approach that does not lose sight of the agent. "I sought to bring back the real actors who disappeared from Levi-Strauss and other structuralists, especially Althusser." This goal forces him to turn to the subjectivist direction, in which Sartre's existentialism dominated during his student days. In addition, he considers Schutz's phenomenology, Bloomer's symbolic interactionism, and Garfinkel's ethnomethodology as examples of subjectivism, since these theories study how social agents think, explain, or represent the social world. At the same time, these directions ignore the objective structures within which these processes take place. Bourdieu believes that these theories focus on activity and ignore structure. Instead of adhering to one of these approaches, Bourdieu explores the dialectical relationship between objective structures and subjective phenomena. Although Bourdieu strives to combine structuralism and constructivism, and in this he partially succeeds, there is a bias in the direction of structuralism in his work. It is for this reason that he (along with Foucault and others) is considered a post-structuralist. In his work, more from structuralism than from constructivism. In contrast to the approach typical of most other theorists (eg, phenomenologists, symbolic interactionists), Bourdieu's constructivism does not take into account subjectivity and intentionality. He really considers it important to include in his sociology the questions of perception and construction of the social world by people on the basis of their position in social space. However, the perception and construction that are present in the social world are both stimulated and constrained by structures.

social space structuralism bourdieu

2. MAIN FEATURES OF P. BOURDIER'S THEORY OF SOCIAL SPACE

Social reality, according to P. Bourdieu, is "social space". In itself, this concept is far from new. In a conceptually expanded form, it has been found since the beginning of the 20th century. The novelty of P. Bourdieu's approach lies in determining the relationship between social and physical space, as well as in describing the internal structure of the former. The physical space is closely connected with the social space, it is its reflection, the expression of the social space outside. In perception, they are difficult to distinguish. Social space is not some given coordinate system relative to which the existing social subjects are located - it is at the same time the location of these subjects in real space. The distance between subjects in the social space is not only social, but also physical. The close intertwining of social and physical spaces, however, does not imply an unambiguous relationship between them. Social space appears before us simultaneously in the totality of its "symbolic" and "physical" dimensions.

The duality of social space, its simultaneous representation both in the “purely” social and physical terms, suggests the duality of the structures that organize the social universe. The essence of the concept of "double structuring" lies in the fact that social reality is structured, firstly, from the outside (existing objectively, i.e., regardless of the consciousness and will of agents) of social relations, which are objectified in the distribution of various capitals, both material and of an intangible nature, and, secondly, on the part of people's ideas about social structures and about the world around them as a whole, which have a reverse effect on the primary structuring. The concept of double structuring includes a set of ideas that reflect the genesis and structure of social reality. What belongs to genesis is the establishment of cause-and-effect relationships in social reality: there are objective (not dependent on the will and consciousness of people) structures that decisively influence the practices, perceptions and thinking of individuals; it is social structures that are the "ultimate causes" of practices and representations of Individual and collective agents that these structures can suppress or stimulate. On the other hand, agents are immanently characterized by activity, they are sources of continuous causal influences on social reality. Thus, social structures determine the practices and representations of agents, but agents produce practices and thereby reproduce or transform structures. These two aspects of the genesis of social reality for P. Bourdieu are by no means equivalent and are not side by side. He does not limit himself to stating that both these aspects are in a "dialectical connection", but points to their hierarchy. The conditionality of the practices and representations of agents by social structures is realized through their production and reproduction by these agents. Due to the fact that they cannot carry out their practices outside and independently of the social structures presupposed by them, which are the necessary conditions and prerequisites for any practices, agents are able to act exclusively “within” already existing social relations and thus always only reproduce or transform them. .

Speaking about the active role of agents in the reproduction/production of social reality, P. Bourdieu emphasizes that it is impossible without incorporated structures - practical schemes that are the product of the internalization of objective social structures. It follows from this that the subjective structuring of social reality is a subordinate element of the structuring of the objective. The second aspect of the double structuring of social reality is structural. It consists in the fact that everything in social reality is structured. First, social relations are unevenly distributed in space and time. Secondly, agents are unevenly distributed among social structures - not all (individual and collective) agents and not at the same time take part in the same social relations. Thirdly, the objectifications of social relations, which P. Bourdieu calls capitals, are also unevenly distributed among (individual and collective) agents. Fourth, incorporated social relations, which include: dispositions, social representations, practical schemes, are distributed extremely unevenly. Agents, based on their practical schemes (i.e., internalized social relations), structure social reality in different ways. The structure of subjective structuring, which manifests itself through the distribution of various types of this structuring among agents, is homologous to the structure of objective structuring, since internalized objective structures play a decisive role in subjective structuring: practical schemes adapt to the position of the agent, if only because their content is conditioned by the previous social struggle. and therefore, albeit in a transformed form, it reflects the configuration of social forces. P. Bourdieu's statement that all social relations are in turn structured leads him to the formation of the concept of "field", understood as a relatively closed and autonomous system of social relations. The field arises as a consequence of a progressive social division of forces. The structure of social space thus appears in a wide variety of contexts as spatial oppositions of inhabited (or appropriated) space, functioning as a kind of spontaneous metaphor for social space. In a hierarchically organized society, there is no space that would not be hierarchized and would not express hierarchies and social distances in a more or less deformed, and most importantly, disguised form due to the action of naturalization, which causes a stable reference of social realities to the physical world. The differences produced by social logic may thus appear to be born out of the nature of things (just think of the idea of "natural boundaries").