Bourdieu’s thought is disturbing. Provocative. Scandalous even, at least for those who do not easily tolerate the unmitigated truth about the social. Nonetheless his ideas, among the most important and innovative of our time, are here to stay. This thought has taken form in the course of a career and through works on diverse subjects that have constructed a far-reaching analytical model of social life, which the author calls more readily an anthropology rather than a sociology. In their totality, they (...) constitute today an original and powerful proposal to explain human practices. In the face of criticisms commonly leveled at Bourdieu’s thought (notably the charge that it reduces everything to a single schematic model), it is important to identify the spirit of his enterprise. Early on, it is true, his thought drew on a few fundamental concepts—the trilogy habitus, field (champ), practice (pratique)—to which it constantly returned, and followed a clearly defined trajectory. At the same time, however, he continually reformulated, adapted, and refined his analytical model, depending on the operations to which he subjected new objects of inquiry. The regenerative and transformative force of his thought was supported by two convictions. First, that there being nothing more vain than theory for theory’s sake, it is preferable that theoretical production originate in the study of concrete and occasionally very specific cases. Second, that in order to escape stereotypical classifications, boundaries separating disciplines are best transgressed, thereby favoring new constructions of the object of inquiry. (shrink)

In this critical notice of Kment's _Modality and Explanatory Reasoning_, we focus on Kment’s arguments for impossible worlds and on a key part of his discussion of the interactions between modality and explanation – the analogy that he draws between scientific and metaphysical explanation.

This chapter focuses on the relations between objective probabilities in physical theories at different levels. In general philosophy of probability, it is frequently assumed that a fundamental deterministic theory cannot support probabilistic phenomena at any higher level, or more generally that there cannot be non-trivial probabilities in higher-level theories that are not encoded in probabilities at the lower level. These assumptions face significant challenges from some well-understood physical theories – I focus on statistical mechanics and Bohmian mechanics – where a (...) deterministic description at some lower level gives rise to an effectively probabilistic theory at some higher level; in each case, constraints arising from an objective physical limitation on the acquisition of evidence concerning the lower level plays a crucial role in supporting the higher-level probabilities. (shrink)

Subject of numerous interpretations and studies, the vicissitudes of the famous Frankfurt Institute for Social Research nevertheless still reserve some little-known pages, such as the human and scientific relationship that bound philosopher Max Horkheimer and economist Friedrich Pollock for over fifty years. Based on texts and letters translated here into English for the first time as well as some previously unpublished documents, the book reconstructs the crucial moments in the friendship between the two scholars with a narrative style and philological (...) accuracy. Nicola Emery accompanies us through the two friends and intellectuals' "nonconformism" and search for an alternative life-form that led to the birth of the Frankfurt critical theory. (shrink)

Comment devient-on philosophe? Par quel sursaut un Aristoclès se fait-il Platon, jusqu'à s'imposer dans la liste des " auteurs philo " Il faut enquêter, non pas sur la vie privée, mais sur la vie intime : rumination intellectuelle, ton sur lequel on parle, motivations amoureuses... Ce qui fait un philosophe, c'est un immense travail sur soi, et la rencontre d'autres philosophes, vivants, de leurs problématiques. Mémoire sémantique + obsession métaphysique, voilà le code génétique du philosophe. Il débute par un attentat (...) religieux, puisqu'il commence sa carrière en niant tel ou tel sacré. Bien sûr, il vaut mieux être mâle, communiquer par les livres adopter la langue dominante, écrire quand on est célibataire. Comment gagner sa vie? Pas forcément en étant enseignant, comme c'est le cas aujourd'hui. Le profil du philosophe nous le révèle orphelin, vivant à l'étranger, souvent laid, jamais fou, et serial thinker, prêt à changer de philosophie pourvu qu'il reste, lui, à menacer le monde donnera ou donnera pas du sens à notre vie? Le philosophe est l'être inquiet qui pense inquiéter l'Être par deux trois mots bien aiguisés. (shrink)

I argue that there are such things as nomological probabilities—probabilities that play a certain explanatory role with respect to stable, long-run relative frequencies. Indeed, I argue, we should be willing to accept nomological probabilities even if they turn out to be metaphysically weird or even wholly sui generis entities. I then give an example of one way in which this argument should shape future work on the metaphysics of chance by describing a challenge to a common group of analyses of (...) objective probability—Humean analyses— understood as analyses of nomological probability. (shrink)

I distinguish between two different ways in which the wavefunction might play a role in explaining the behavior of quantum systems and argue that a satisfactory account of quantum ontology will make it possible for the wavefunction to explain the behavior of quantum systems in both of these way. I then show how this constraint has the potential to impact two quite different accounts of quantum ontology.

As with any proposal for institutional reform, and especially one that has gained so much ground in such a short amount of time, this paper asks whether diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement is good for corporations. Are businesses stronger with DEI practices and ideas or weaker? We believe that the DEI movement is asking the right questions: How do we create more just and equitable institutions? The challenge, however, is whether this movement is giving the right answers to such (...) questions. The main premise of our paper is that without deeper principles than DEI itself, these qualities of corporate life will be misunderstood, misused, and disordered in our increasingly fragmented and politicized culture. We propose in this essay that “subsidiarity” serves as one of those deeper principles that can order and enrich our understanding of DEI. It serves as a gift principle that begins to reveal the deepest nature of our work, namely, that our work allows us to exercise our gifts in serving others. (shrink)

During the last two decades, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has become a dominant force in cultural activity ranging from taste in music and art to choices in food and lifestyles. _The Field of Cultural Production_ brings together Bourdieu's major essays on art and literature and provides the first introduction to Bourdieu's writings and theory of a cultural field that situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. Bourdieu develops a highly original approach to the study (...) of literary and artistic works, addressing many of the key issues that have preoccupied literary art and cultural criticism in the last twentieth century: aesthetic value and canonicity, intertextuality, the institutional frameworks of cultural practice, the social role of intellectuals and artists, and structures of literary and artistic authority. Bourdieu elaborates a theory of the cultural field which situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. He examines the individuals and institutions involved in making cultural products what they are: not only the writers and artists, but also the publishers, critics, dealers, galleries, and academies. He analyzes the structure of the cultural field itself as well as its position within the broader social structures of power. The essays in his volume examine such diverse topics as Flaubert's point of view, Manet's aesthetic revolution, the historical creation of the pure gaze, and the relationship between art and power. The Field of Cultural Porduction will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines: sociology and social theory, literature, art, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Over the last four decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died two years ago, he was considered to be a thinker on a par with Foucault, Barthes, and Lacan--a public intellectual as influential to his generation as Sartre was to his. Science of Science and Reflexivity will be welcomed as a companion volume to Bourdieu's now seminal An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (...) . In this posthumous work, Bourdieu declares that science is in danger of becoming a handmaiden to biotechnology, medicine, genetic engineering, and military research--that it risks falling under the control of industrial corporations that seek to exploit it for monopolies and profit. Science thus endangered can become detrimental to mankind. The line between pure and applied science, therefore, must be subjected to intense theoretical scrutiny. Bourdieu's goals in Science of Science and Reflexivity are to identify the social conditions in which science develops in order to reclaim its objectivity and to rescue it from relativism and the forces that might exploit it. In the grand tradition of scientific reflections on science, Bourdieu provides a sociological analysis of the discipline as something capable of producing transhistorical truths he presents an incisive critique of the main currents in the study of science throughout the past half century and he offers a spirited defense of science against encroaching political and economic forces. A masterful summation of the principles underlying Bourdieu's oeuvre and a memoir of his own scientific journey, Science of Science and Reflexivity is a capstone to one of the most important and prodigious careers in the field of sociology. (shrink)

Written with verve and intensity (and a good bit of wordplay), this is the long-awaited study of Flaubert and the modern literary field that constitutes the ...

Examining in detail the work of consecration carried out by elite education systems, Bourdieu analyzes the distinctive forms of power—political, intellectual, bureaucratic, and economic—by means of which contemporary societies are governed.

Replete with madwomen, murderers, musicians, and mystics, "Lonely Woman" dramatically interweaves the lives of five women. It remains Takako Takahashi's most sustained and multifaceted fictional realization of her concept of "loneliness.".

The ability to imagine hypothetical events in one’s personal future is thought to involve a number of constituent cognitive processes. We investigated the extent to which individual differences in working memory capacity contribute to facets of episodic future thought. College students completed simple and complex measures of working memory and were cued to recall autobiographical memories and imagine future autobiographical events consisting of varying levels of specificity . Consistent with previous findings, future thought was related to analogous measures of autobiographical (...) memory, likely reflecting overlapping cognitive factors supporting both past and future thought. Additionally, after controlling for autobiographical memory, residual working memory variance independently predicted future episodic specificity. We suggest that when imagining future events, working memory contributes to the construction of a single, coherent, future event depiction, but not to the retrieval or elaboration of event details. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's overt alliance with the Nazis and the specific relation between this alliance and his philosophical thought - the degree to which his concepts are linked to a thoroughly disreputable set of political beliefs - have been the topic of a storm of recent debate. Written ten years before this debate, this study by France's leading sociologist and cultural theorist is both a precursor of that debate and an analysis of the institutional mechanisms involved in the production of philosophical (...) discourse. Though Heidegger is aware of and acknowledges the legitimacy of purely philosophical issues (in his references to canonic authors, traditional problems, and respect for academic taboos), Bourdieu points out that the complexity and abstraction of Heidegger's philosophical discourse stems from its situation in the cultural field, where two social and intellentual dimensions - political thought and academic thought - intersect. Bourdieu concludes by suggesting that Heidegger should not be considered as a Nazi ideologist, that there is no place in Heidegger's philosophical ideas for a racist conception of the human being. Rather, he sees Heidegger's thought as a structural equivalent in the field of philosophy of the 'conservative revolution', of which nazism is but one manifestation. (shrink)

Global warming, like many other environmental controversies, mixes pervasive uncertainty with the certainties of expert (but contradictory) opinion. How can we know who is right about global warming, if the only things we have to work with are the scientists’ competing scenarios, the truth‐value of which has yet to be established? One approach is to rely on narrative policy analysis to identify the non‐scientific, but policy‐relevant role played by the global warming controversy. This approach shows that the controversy signals a (...) wider “analytic tip” taking place in the examination of major public policy problems, a tip toward the notion that issues which can still be effectively dealt with locally, regionally or nationally must now first be addressed globally. The policy implications of analytic tip and the narrative features of the global warming scenario are profound for both environmentalists and their ideological opponents. (shrink)

A plateau has been reached in how to analyze people's use of their common property resources. We require fresh ways of thinking about the issue. Four new and very different approaches are sketched in the article.

Jon Elster's notion of 'local justice systems' helps recon ceive sustainable development in several fresh ways. Keeping options open for the future use of resources turns out to be a justice/injustice cycle: the more sustainable development becomes a global phenom enon, the more locally unjust its uniform application would necess arily be. The more uniform the application, the greater the local pressure for suitably varied alternatives. But the more varied the applications, the greater the chance of global injustice arising from (...) the decentralization and lack of coordination on the ground. In this way, sustainable development must be seen as not ending when unjust global systems become more just, but rather as continuing through a set of iterations whose moments include a rejection of an overly globalized sustainable development. Key Words: Jon Elster • local justice systems • sustainable development. (shrink)