Pierre Bourdieu, French Sociologist, Dies Alan Riding New York Times Service Friday, January 25, 2002
PARIS Pierre Bourdieu, 71, a leading French sociologist and maverick intellectual who emerged as a public figure here in the 1990s by championing the anti-globalization movement and other anti-establishment causes, died of cancer Wednesday in a Paris hospital. The author of 25 books, many of which have been translated, Mr. Bourdieu was particularly interested in exploring the formative roots of class distinctions and power structures. He applied his theories to a broad range of topics, including education, television, masculinity, intellectuals, the media and language. While his influence has long been felt in academic circles in France and the United States, Mr. Bourdieu assumed a public role in the tradition of Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre only in the last decade, when he became what Le Monde called "the intellectual reference" for movements opposed to free-market orthodoxy and globalization.
In the process, he also turned his guns on television presenters for delivering what he called "cultural fast food" and on many fellow intellectuals whom he accused of abusing their privileged status in France by opining on issues about which they knew little. Counterattacks by intellectuals like Alain Finkelkraut and Bernard-Henry Levi in turn insured that he remained in the public eye.
Yet while he described his political position as "to the left of the left," meaning that he considered the Socialist Party to have sold out, he stood at the heart of France's intellectual establishment. He held the chair of sociology at the College de France - an elite government-backed think-tank - he taught at the prestigious Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and he edited a sociology journal.
One measure of his iconoclastic renown in France was that the report of his death was the lead story in the Thursday edition of Le Monde. Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, himself a Socialist, described Mr. Bourdieu as "a master" of contemporary sociology and said "his works made him the leader of a school of thought that applied incisive criticism to the capitalist society."
One of Mr. Bourdieu's central theses was that social and cultural breeding were critical to achieving status and power.
"Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste," published in France in 1979, was named one of the 20th century's 10 most important works of sociology by the International Sociological Association.
Among his other influential works are "State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power," "Homo Academicus," "Pascalian Meditations," "Television" and "The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Societies," which he edited.
Mr. Bourdieu had a fatalistic view of the social and economic possibilities available to most people, believing that one enters adult life with the experiences that will determine their success or failure. "The point of my work is to show that culture and education aren't simply hobbies or minor influences," he told The New York Times. "They are hugely important in the affirmation of differences between groups and social classes and in the reproduction of those differences."
Persuaded that most people in France did not have a fair chance to rise in society, he came to favor the underdog, above all those fighting against perceived injustices wrought by unfettered capitalism, whether students, striking workers or anti-globalization militants.
"Ours is a Darwinian world of insecurity and stress, where the permanent threat of unemployment creates a permanent state of precariousness," he once wrote. Among those whom he supported was Jose Bove, the French small-farmers' leader who gained fame overnight in 1999 by leading an attack on a McDonald's outlet regarded as a symbol of globalization. Mr. Bove was among those remembering Mr. Bourdieu warmly Thursday. "For him," Mr. Bove said, "life itself was a commitment."