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Pierre Bourdieu, one of the "master thinkers" shaping French intellectual life, died in Paris in late January,following a struggle with cancer. A professor at the College de France, Bourdieu, 71, was among the leading sociologists of his generation. His models of "habitus" and "cultural capital" sought to account for how relations of hierarchy and domination are reproduced within the various "fields" (such as education, politics, and the media) making up a society. Numerous studies of his work have appeared in recent years, including Culture & Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (University of Chicago Press, 1997) by David Swartz, a visiting assistant professor of sociology at Boston University.
In the United States, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste remains his best-known work among scholars. However, Bourdieu won a sizable nonacademic audience here for his essays against free-market policy, many of them found in the collection Acts of Resistance. And in Homo Academicus and other writings, Bourdieu applied his sociological methods to an analysis of the intelligentsia. The picture that emerged was seldom flattering. Beneath his statistical tables and convoluted prose, Bourdieu often seemed to be concealing (just barely) the gifts of satirist.
The co-author with Bourdieu of An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Loïc Wacquant is professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. In a telephone interview on the day after Bourdieu's death, Mr. Wacquant spoke from Paris about the thinker's life, work, and legacy.
Q: It's hard for Americans to grasp the extent of Bourdieu's prominence in France. Analogies are sometimes made to Jean-Paul Sartre. Although that comparison is fairly inappropriate, Bourdieu did occupy an absolutely central position in recent years. How would you characterize his role?
A: Le Monde, the major national daily, postponed publication of its editions today in order to put news of his death on the front page. The prime minister and various parties of the left have expressed their condolonces. He was very keen to bring the fruits of his scientific work [in sociology] to bear on urgent issues. He has been a public figure in public debates over the past seven or eight years in France, but also throughout Europe, especially in Germany, where he is almost better known than in...