Habitus and Field: General Sociology, Volume 2 (1982-1983)

Bourdieu's "General Sociology" lectures define and defend sociology as an intellectual discipline, focusing on habitus and field. The relation between the habitus and the field is a two-way process of conditioning and knowledge, with the field structuring the habitus and the habitus helping to constitute the field as a world of meaning and value. This volume is an ideal introduction to Bourdieu's most important concepts and ideas for students and scholars of social sciences and humanities, and general readers.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 432 pages
Publication date: 21 July 2023
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd

This is the second of five volumes based on the lectures given by Pierre Bourdieu at the Collège de France in the early 1980s under the title General Sociology. In these lectures, Bourdieu sets out to define and defend sociology as an intellectual discipline, and in doing so, he introduces and clarifies all the key concepts that have come to define his distinctive intellectual approach. In this volume, Bourdieu focuses on two of his most important and influential concepts: habitus and field. For the social scientist, the object of study is neither the individual nor the group but the relation between these two manifestations of the social in bodies and in things: that is, the obscure, dual relation between the habitus – as a system of schemas of perception, appreciation, and action – and the field as a system of objective relations and a space of possible actions and struggles aimed at preserving or transforming the field. The relation between the habitus and the field is a two-way process: it is a relation of conditioning, where the field structures the habitus, and it is also a relation of knowledge, with the habitus helping to constitute the field as a world that is endowed with meaning and value. The specificity of social science lies in the fact. The object of knowledge is a reality that encompasses agents who take this same reality as the object of their own knowledge. An ideal introduction to some of Bourdieu's most important concepts and ideas, this volume will be of great interest to the many students and scholars who study and use Bourdieu's work across the social sciences.

humanities, and to general readers who want to know more about the work of one of the most important sociologists and social thinkers
thinkers of the 20th century.

Weight: 595g
Dimension: 248 x 186 x 31 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781509560660