In memoriam Pierre Bourdieu

Samenvatting

In Memoriam Pierre Bourdieu. Obituary of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who died in Jan 2002. Bourdieu, whose work combines eclectic foundations with rigorous empirical execution, resisted many accepted truisms. He integrated various research traditions on collective images and social class into a complex oeuvre focusing on symbolic power in relation to the subject's habitus or intellectual and/or cultural environment. His search for a new sociological paradigm was fueled by the unconventionality of his ideas and of his research and teaching routines, and he advocated an inherently self-reflexive sociological discipline, in which self-reflection served as a "mental art of war" against the researcher's subjective opinions and projections rather than in a postmodernist, relativist manner. In the later stages of his life, he showed strong interest in the connection between social research and political engagement, supporting and heading a number of social and cultural initiatives against the increasing concentration of global economic power. It is maintained that Bourdieu reinvented not only the content and methodology of the social sciences, but also broadened their applicability and purpose in society at large. S. Paul