Bourdieu, Historicity, and Historical Sociology

By:Steinmetz, G (Steinmetz, George)

CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY
Volume: 5

Issue: 1

Pages: 45-66
DOI: 10.1177/1749975510389912
Published: MAR 2011
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Abstract
This article examines Bourdieu's contributions to history and historical sociology. Bourdieu has often been misread as an ahistorical 'reproduction theorist' whose work does not
allow for diachronic change or human agency. The article argues both that reproduction and social change, constraint and freedom, are at the heart of Bourdieu's project.
Bourdieu's key concepts - habitus, field, cultural and symbolic capital - are all inherently historical. Bourdieu deploys his basic categories using a distinctly historicist social
epistemology organized around the ideas of conjuncture, contingency, overdetermination, and radical discontinuity. The origins of Bourdieu's historicism are traced to his
teachers at the Ecole Normale Superieure and to the long-standing aspirations among French historians and sociologists to unify the two disciplines. The historical nature of
Bourdieu's work is also signalled by its pervasive influence on historians and the historical work of his former students and colleagues. Bourdieu allowed sociology to historicize
itself to a greater extent than other French sociologists.

Keywords
Author Keywords:Bourdieu; French sociology; habitus; historical sociology; historicism; social epistemology; social field; symbolic capital
KeyWords Plus:SOCIAL-HISTORY; FIELD

Author Information
Reprint Address: Steinmetz, G (reprint author)

Univ Michigan, Dept Sociol, LSA Bldg,Room 3001,500 S State St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA.

Addresses:

[ 1 ] Univ Michigan, Dept Sociol, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA

E-mail Addresses:geostein@umich.edu

Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 1 OLIVERS YARD, 55 CITY ROAD, LONDON EC1Y 1SP, ENGLAND

Categories / Classification
Research Areas:Sociology
Web of Science Categories:Sociology

Document Information
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Accession Number: WOS:000288695500003
ISSN: 1749-9755

Journal Information
Table of Contents: Current Contents Connect
Impact Factor: Journal Citation Reports

Other Information
IDS Number: 739EE
Cited References in Web of Science Core Collection: 132
Times Cited in Web of Science Core Collection: 17