Bij het overlijden van Pierre Bourdieu

Samenvatting

On the Occasion of Pierre Bourdieu's Death. Prompted by his death, Pierre Bourdieu's significance for the social sciences is described. Bourdieu is described as an essentially emancipatorily oriented researcher, whose work connects the discipline's main traditions and empirical methods with political arguments about power and its reproduction. Though his style is often considered difficult and hard to understand, it is argued that this characteristic is intentional, representing a strategy against superficial interpretations and simplistic applications. Bourdieu aimed to describe a social fact, including all its contradictions and qualifications, in each paragraph; to avoid manipulation and to enhance insight, he insisted on rendering social reality in all its shades and paradoxes. This strategy of ouvrir sa gueule "open one's mouth" was intended to aid the development of a European intelligentsia to counteract the injustices of neoliberalism and other social dominance patterns. Bourdieu's combative personality is deemed one of his great strengths and, at the same time, an important reason for detractors to criticize him. S. Paul