Choses dites

Pierre Bourdieu is a sociologist who holds a chair at the Collège de France, and his reach goes well past sociology into philosophy, anthropology, ethnology and cultural theory. He has written more than twenty books. This collection gathers pieces he wrote between 1980 and 1986, some of them interviews in which he answers sharp, well-prepared questioners and others papers he delivered at conferences to sharpen and widen particular lines of his research.

The timing of the collection matters, since his ideas had by then spread widely and gained a considerable public profile. The texts revisit his earlier positions, correct readings that had gone astray, develop insights he had already reached, and sketch where his work was heading next. This English edition also includes his well-known inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, Leçon sur la Leçon.

Bourdieu's arguments here are lively and precise, which makes the book an accessible and compact way into his thinking for readers new to his work.