Thinkers Timeline

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) was a French sociologist whose work on class, culture, and power made him one of the most influential social scientists of the second half of the twentieth century. He was born in the village of Denguin in the Béarn region of south-western France, close to the Pyrenees mountains. His family was not wealthy. His father had left school young and worked as a postal employee and then as a small farmer. His mother was a country woman from a similar background. Bourdieu was a clever pupil, and his teachers helped him move up through the French education system — first to the lycée in Pau, then to the elite preparatory classes in Paris, and finally to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, where he studied philosophy alongside Jacques Derrida and other future major thinkers. His country origins in a Paris of educated elites shaped his whole life and work. He always felt partly out of place in elite circles, and this experience of not quite belonging gave him a special eye for how social distinction actually works. After finishing his studies, he was sent to Algeria as a French army conscript in 1955, during the war for Algerian independence. The experience changed him. He saw colonial oppression first-hand, stayed on to do fieldwork as a sociologist-anthropologist after his military service, and produced his first books about Algerian society under French rule. He returned to France in 1960 and began building the distinctive approach that would occupy the rest of his career. He held posts at Lille and Paris before becoming professor at the Collège de France in 1981 — the highest academic position in France. He founded the Centre for European Sociology and a research journal, both of which became centres of major work. His books include Distinction (1979) on taste and class, Homo Academicus (1984) on the sociology of academia, The Rules of Art (1992) on the literary field, and many others. In his last years he became increasingly politically active, particularly in opposition to what he called neoliberal policies across Europe. He died in Paris in 2002 at the age of seventy-one. His influence on sociology, education, cultural studies, and political theory has continued to grow since his death.