El baile de los solteros

by Pierre Bourdieu, Thomas Kauf (Translator)

Pierre Bourdieu pasó sus primeros años en un pueblo conocido por su arcaísmo y del que más tarde se ocuparía en uno de sus primeros estudios de etnografía: «Soltería y condición campesina» (1962). Este artículo y «Las estrategias matrimoniales en el sistema de reproducción» (1972) y «Reproducción prohibida. La dimensión simbólica de la dominación económica» (1989) son los tres ejes que vertebran este libro. Bourdieu encarrila su análisis partiendo de una pregunta clave: ¿cómo es posible que, en una sociedad asentada tradicionalmente sobre el derecho de los primogénitos, sean éstos los que se queden solteros? La respuesta se relaciona con los cambios de costumbres impuestos por la vida moderna que han vuelto obsoletos los usos tradicionales. A lo largo de estos trabajos, Bourdieu vuelve a mostrar el valor fundamental de conceptos como habitus, estrategia o dominación simbólica.

Genres: Nonfiction, France, Anthropology, Ethnography

282 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life. His work emphasized the role of practice and embodiment or forms in social dynamics and worldview construction, often in opposition to universalized Western philosophical traditions. He built upon the theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Georges Canguilhem, Karl Marx, Gaston Bachelard, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Erwin Panofsky, and Marcel Mauss. A notable influence on Bourdieu was Blaise Pascal, after whom Bourdieu titled his Pascalian Meditations.

Bourdieu rejected the idea of the intellectual "prophet", or the "total intellectual", as embodied by Sartre. His best known book is Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, in which he argues that judgments of taste are related to social position. His argument is put forward by an original combination of social theory and data from surveys, photographs and interviews, 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 external social structures and subjective experience on the individual (see structure and agency).

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good description of cultural change and cultural identity and how the dominated classes come to see themselves in the images of those who dominate them.

[Sencer Turunç · Rating 4 out of 5]

Modern öncesi köylülük mefhumunun evlilik müessesesi üzerinden soykütüksel bir çalışması ortaya konulmuş... Değişen sosyal, ekonomik ve kültürel şablon içerisinde köylülük metni ile bekarlık metni arasındaki ilişki irdeleniyor... Pierre Bourdieu bir harika...