Pierre Bourdieu: Agent Provocateur

The French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu is now recognized as leading intellectual of the late twentieth century, and one whose ideas are very much relevant for the twenty-first. This comprehensive acount of Bourdieu's life and work located both in their social and political context, thereby tracing the origins of his ideas and theories. It explains and explores just what Bourdieu argued for and why. It also illuminates the social, political, and philosophical strands that run through his work. Michael Grenfill's broad scope takes in Bourdieu's response to The Algerian Crisis, his ideas for the reform of state education, and his views on aesthetics and the mass media. Detailed attention is also paid to Bourdieu's overtly political stance, including his critique of capitalism and his opposition ot recent Western military action in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan. This book offers a reading of Bourdieu's work as a coherent and valuable response to those key social and political issues, events and trends that combined to shape contemporary society. The implications and consequences of his work are laid out and assessed, along with suggestions for where his ideas might be taken from here. This is the clearest and most thorough account of Bourdieu's work available; as such, it will be invaluable to students, researchers, and teacher of contemporary society theory.