Conversations with Bourdieu: The Johannesburg Moment

by Michael Burawoy, Karl Von Holdt

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) is the most influential sociologist of our time. His works take in education, culture, sport, literature, painting, class, philosophy, religion, law, media, intellectuals, methodology, photography, universities, colonialism, kinship, schooling and politics. Not much remains outside Bourdieu?s sociological eye. His works are widely read across disciplines and he was one of the most prominent public intellectuals in France. Conversations with Bourdieu presents the first comprehensive attempt at a critical engagement with Bourdieu?s theory as a totality. Michael Burawoy constructs a series of imaginary conversations between Bourdieu and his nemesis ? Marxism ? from which he silently borrowed so much. Starting with Marx, and proceeding through Gramsci, Fanon, Freire, de Beauvoir, and Mills, Burawoy takes up the challenge Bourdieu presents to Marxism, simultaneously developing a critique of Bourdieu and a reconstruction of Marxism. Karl Von Holdt, in turn, brings these conversations to South Africa, showing the relevance of Bourdieu?s ideas to a country he never visited. Armed with Bourdieu, Von Holdt takes up some of the most pressing social and political issues of contemporary South the relation between symbolic and real violence, the place of intellectuals in public life, the intervention of gender in politics, the grappling with race, the critique of education, the importance of habitus, the history and future of class mobilisation, and the legacy of the liberation struggle. Conversations with Bourdieu pioneers a distinctive approach to doing social theory that is neither a combat sport nor an artificial synthesis, but a way of pushing theory to its limits through dialogue ? dialogue between theorists and dialogue between theory and the world it represents. The book is distinctive too in pointing towards a new global sociology consciously rooted in a dialogue between the social realities and theoretical perspectives of North and South. The conversations were first presented as Mellon Lectures at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 2010

Genres: Sociology

248 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2012

About the author

Michael Burawoy was a British sociologist working within Marxist social theory, best known as the leading proponent of public sociology and the author of Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism—a study on the sociology of industry that has been translated into a number of languages.
Burawoy was a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was president of the American Sociological Association in 2004. In 2006–2010, he was one of the vice-presidents for the Committee of National Associations of the International Sociological Association (ISA). In the XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology he was elected the 17th President of the International Sociological Association (ISA) for the period 2010–2014.

Reviews

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

“It is easier for intellectuals and academics to attack the excesses of the market than to see themselves exercising symbolic violence over society by virtue of the autonomy they so stoutly defend. While intellectuals denounce physical violence throughout the world, they are reluctant to recognize that they, too, are the perpetrators of violence, that is, a symbolic violence that ensures a taken-for-granted-what Bourdieu calls "doxic" —submission to domination incorporated in bodies and language. Thus, although they may see themselves as autonomous, intellectuals are implicated in the state through its monopoly of the legitimate use of symbolic violence, through consecrated classifications and categories.
But intellectuals, academics, and social scientists are not all of a piece. While most do not recognize their contribution to symbolic violence, some, like Bourdieu, spell out the truth of symbolic violence. This division of intellectuals into those who have good sense and those who have bad sense calls for an analysis of academic fields that reveals what we are up to behind our screens of objectivity, pointing to the ways we deceive both ourselves and others. In short, the sociology that we apply to others must be applied equally to ourselves.”

The purpose of such reflexivity, however, is not to denounce fellow scientists but to liberate them from the illusions - scholastic fallacies - that spring from the conditions under which they produce knowledge, namely their freedom from material necessity.

Bourdieu criticizes fellow academics for not recognizing how their material conditions shape their knowledge production, and so they mistakenly foist their theories onto the subjects whose actions they theorize. For Bourdieu, to better understand the conditions of the production of knowledge is a condition for producing better knowledge.

Both Marx and Bourdieu start out as critics of intellectualist illusions or scholastic fallacies that privilege the role of ideas in the making of history. They both move to the logic of practice.

“It is one thing to discover the objective truth of labor (i.e., exploitation); it is another to show how exploitation is sustained by workers themselves.”

Interesting explorations into Symbolic Violence; a bit repetitive (for me).

[Camcam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Vrm un demi habile qui a mal lu Bourdieu, et aussi décevant que pas mal d’amerlock quand il en parle.

Tentative de plaquer Gramsci à tout prix, mais la lecture croisée générale reste très superficielle et centrée sur leur position politique (vrm pas le plus intéressant chez Bourdieu).

Après fun de relever les liens (non réalisés) entre Bourdieu et Fanon, par racisme de boubou sûrement :/