University of Amsterdam | Giselinde Kuipers presents Pierre Bourdieu | AISSR Great Thinkers Series

This lecture presents a brief introduction to the life and work of Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002).

It is difficult to find a social scientist today who is not aware of the ‘textbook’ version of Bourdieu: the author of La Reproduction and La Distinction, the scholar who coined the notion of cultural capital, who made habitus a household world, and who made social scientists see ‘fields’ wherever they go. A prolific ethnologist, sociologist, social theorist, activist and public intellectual, Bourdieu was indeed a great thinker.

This lecture aims to go beyond, or even put some dents in this textbook version of Bourdieu. First, Giselinde Kuipers gives a short overview of the ‘building blocks’ of Bourdieu’s theory: field, habitus and capital, showing how they work together to make up a coherent and productive theoretical program.

Second, she discusses some of Bourdieu’s empirical studies (including some that have nothing to do with French snobbery). For Kuipers, the true dazzle of Bourdieu’s work is the range and diversity of this empirical work: from family photography, Algerian floor plans, to real estate, literature, lonely bachelors and classroom interactions; and from large-scale survey to ethnography.

Third, Kuipers presents some Bourdieusian reflections on Bourdieu’s (shifting) position in the transnational intellectual field. Why and how did this very French thinker become so influential, also internationally? And will it last?

About Giselinde Kuipers
Giselinde Kuipers is a professor of cultural sociology at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. She has published widely in the fields of cultural sociology, the sociology of humor, media studies, and cultural globalization and transnational culture. Much of this research is comparative: she has done research in several European countries (the Netherlands, France, Italy and Poland) as well as the US.