Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Life, Work and Influences of a ‘Master of Suspicion’
- 2 Theory of Practice: Field, Habitus, Capital
- 3 Bourdieu's Writings on Religion
- 4 Outline of a Theory of Religious Practice: Eternalizing the Arbitrary in Colonial New England
- 5 Using Bourdieu to Interpret Religion: Applications and Limitations
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Concise Glossary of Key Terms
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The Life, Work and Influences of a ‘Master of Suspicion’
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Life, Work and Influences of a ‘Master of Suspicion’
- 2 Theory of Practice: Field, Habitus, Capital
- 3 Bourdieu's Writings on Religion
- 4 Outline of a Theory of Religious Practice: Eternalizing the Arbitrary in Colonial New England
- 5 Using Bourdieu to Interpret Religion: Applications and Limitations
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Concise Glossary of Key Terms
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I believe that, whatever slight chance I may have of not being finished off by consecration, I owe to the fact that I have worked to analyze consecration. I even think that I might be able to use the authority that this consecration has given me to give more authority to my analysis of the logic and effects of consecration.
(in Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 210)Life
For someone who eventually became quite a public and politically engaged figure of iconic national stature and international renown, Pierre Bourdieu was rather guarded about his background and personal life. To date, the closest English-language text to a biography of Bourdieu, Michael Grenfell's Pierre Bourdieu: Agent Provocateur (2004), consists of merely five pages of ‘Personal Biography’, followed by a much longer and excellent discussion of the French ‘Intellectual Climate’ in which Bourdieu was educated and rose to prominence. Bourdieu held biography in general in contempt: ‘To try to understand a life as a unique and self-sufficient series of events with no links other than the association with a subject whose constancy is no doubt merely that of a proper name, is nearly as absurd as to try to make sense of a route in the metro without taking into account the structure of the subway network, that is, the matrix of objective relations between the different train stations’ (Bourdieu 1986a, 71).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Bourdieu on ReligionImposing Faith and Legitimacy, pp. 13 - 38Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2007