Political Interventions: Social Science and Political Action

415 Pages·2008·32.09 MB·English

by  Pierre Bourdieu (author)

Pierre Bourdieu
Political Interventions
Social science and political action
Texts selected and introduced
by Franck Poupeau and Thierry Discepolo
Translated by David Fernbach
VERSO
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This work was published with the help of the French
Ministry of Culture - Centre national du livre.
First published by Verso 2008
Copyright © Verso 2008
Translation © David Fembach 2008
First published as interventions, 1961 2001. Science soc/cj/e & action politique
by Editions Agone, 2002.
Copyright © Editions Agone 2002
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
I 3579 10 8642
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Faced with the serfdom of the assembly line or the misery of shanty-
towns, to say nothing of the torture and violence of concentration
camps, Hegel's 'this is how it is' - permissible enough when gazing at
mountains — becomes equivalent to a criminal complicity. Because
nothing is less neutral, in the world of society, than the authoritative
utterance of Being; the findings of science inevitably exert a political
effect, which may not be that which the scholar intended.
Inaugural lecture at the College de France, 1982
If these interventions of science on the terrain of the most burning
current topics had at any price to be justified, one could at least appeal
to the critical functions they may exert in a time such as this, when
political authorities evoke scientific competence and scientific guaran
tees in order to convert political problems into purely technical choices,
and authorized commentators ever more frequently appeal to sources
with a scientific appearance, such as opinion polls, which give the
appearance of rational foundation to the ambition to speak in the
name of'public opinion'. In any case, it is not forbidden to hope that
these limited contributions, subject to revision and often negative in
their understanding of the present, may serve as an antidote to the
scepticism and even irrationalism that the failure of grand prophesies
has promoted.
'La science and l'actualite', 1986

Contents
Editors' Note xi
Introduction:
A Specific Kind Of Political Commitment xiii
1958-1962: Political Commitment During A War Of Liberation xvii
1961-1963
1 Colonial War and Revolutionary Consciousness 3
Revolution in the revolution 7
From revolutionary war to revolution 14
A retrospective on the Algerian experience 20
My feelings about Sartre 25
1964-1970
2 Education and Domination 31
Jacobin ideology 34
'I see May 1968 as having two faces ..." 40
Appeal for the organization of a general assembly
of teaching and research 41
Some indicators for a policy of democratization 46
A look back at the reception of The Inheritors and
Reproduction in Education 49
1971-1980
3 Against the Science of Political Dispossession 57
The doxosophists 60
Public opinion 61
Intellectuals and social struggle 64
Giving voice to the voiceless 70
Esprit magazine and Pierre Bourdieu's sociology 78
Blessed are the poor in spirit 79
CONTENTS
4 Dominant Ideology and Scientific Autonomy 87
Declaration of intent, Actes de la Recherche
en Sciences Sociales I, January 1975 90
Scientific method and the social hierarchy of objects 93
Declaration of intent, Actes de la Recherche en
Sciences Sociales 5/6, November 1975 97
'Intelligence is the key virtue of the modern leader . . / 93
Encyclopaedia of accepted ideas and commonplaces
used in neutral spaces 99
The royal science and the fatalism of probability 103
'And if we actually spoke about Afghanistan . . .' I 13
The culture of the rich I 14
The anatomy of taste I 15
1970-1980: political commitment and ideological shift | 17
1981-1986
5 Lay People and Professionals in Politics 121
'Notice to the people' 124
Politics belongs to them 125
'Missed opportunities: after 1936 and 1956, 1981?' 126
Rediscovering the left's libertarian tradition 127
Intellectuals and established powers I 31
Revealing the wellsprings of power I 33
All racism is essentialism I 37
On Michel Foucault I 33
1984-1990
6 Education and Education Policy 143
The naked emperors of the university 147
Proposals for the future of education 15^
Twenty years before the College de France report 159
The College de France report. Pierre Bourdieu explains 160
A refusal to be cannon-fodder for the bosses 167
Principles for a discussion of the contents of education 173
Letter to the lyceens of Les Mureaux 13 \
1988-1995
7 Disenchantment with Politics, and a Realpolrtik of Reason 185
Civic virtue I gg
Basing criticism on a knowledge of the social world 191
Our wretched state 197,
CONTENTS
8 For Struggles on a European Scale 205
For an international of intellectuals 209
History rises in the east 218
The political language of consen/ative revolutions 221
Mental walls 222
Intellectual responsibilities 228
How to escape the circle of fear? 230
Declaration of intent, Liber 25, 1995 233
In the service of historical forms of universality 234
The object of a writers' parliament 238
9 Towards a Collective Intellectual 243
An example of 'rational demagogy' in education 247
A trompe I'oeil university reform 250
One problem can be hidden by another 253
Stay the hands of the murderers! 254
For a party of civil peace 256
Failing to assist an endangered person 259
M. Pasqua, his adviser, and foreigners 261
No ghettoizing of Algeria! 263
Reveal and divulge the repressed 265
1995-2001
10 Supporting Social Struggles 271
A look back at the December 1995 strikes 275
Appeal for a general assembly of the social movement 280
In support of the march for homosexual visibility 282
Combat state xenophobia 284
Enough state racism! 286
Neoliberalism as conservative revolution 288
An upsurge of action by the unemployed 294
For a left that is left 296
An age of restoration 300
One minister doesn't make a summer 302
The contemporary relevance of Karl Kraus 308
I I The Media in the Sen/ice of Conservative Revolution 315
Liberation, twenty years on 319
Questions of words 321
From miscellany to a matter of state 324
The misery of the media 326
Questions about a misunderstanding 332
CONTENTS
Can television criticize television? 333
Questions to the real masters of the world 340
12 Resisting the Liberal Counter-Revolution 347
Open letter to the members of the UN mission to Algeria 35 |
European appeal for a just and lasting peace in the Balkans 355
For an Austria in the forefront of Europe 358
Manifesto for a general assembly of the European
social movement 362
The new planetary vulgate 364
Open letter to the director-general of UNESCO
on the threats posed by the GATT agreement 370
Social Europe is hanging fire 373
For a real mobilization of organized forces 374
For a permanent organization of resistance to
the new world order 377
Scholars and the social movement 380
How to effectively establish the critical attitude 384
Index 389
Editors9 Note
This project of a collection of Pierre Bourdieu's political interventions orig
inated in autumn 1999, based on a work of Frank Poupeau that was conceived
for Latin American publication, 'Utopias sociologicamente fundadas', in
Pierre Bourdieu, El Campo politico (La Paz: Plural Lditores 2001).
While the thematic and chronological organization is our work, as also
the choice of texts, these were approved in the main by Pierre Bourdieu,
following the aim that we fixed for ourselves at the start: to bring up to
date, simply by way of an organized alignment, the underpinnings of a work
that was never cut off from the turmoil of social and political history.
Despite the international significance of Bourdieu's work, broadly
commented on and discussed, we have privileged here, for reasons of clarity,
the French dimensions of his interventions and the polemics that these some
times aroused.
The majority of Pierre Bourdieu's texts have been reproduced under their
original titles, simply with some stylistic corrections and some occasional
cuts. The non-italicized quotations in our introductory material are Bourdieu's
own, as well as the epigraphs on each historic period.
We are particularly grateful to Marie-Christine Riviere and Yvette Delsaut
for their bibliography of the works of Pierre Bourdieu, without which this
collection could not have been conceived: Bibliographie des travaux de Pierre
Bourdieu (Paris: Pantin 2002).
We would also like to thank Jerome Bourdieu, Michel Caietti, Pierre
Carles, Pascale Casanova, Patrick Champagne, Rosine Christin, Frederic
Cotton, Isabelle de Bary, Serge Halimi, Isabelle Kalinowski, Sebastien Mengin,
Marc Panatella, Pierre Rimbert, Beatrice Vincent and Loic Wacquant for
their valuable assistance.
Finally, we thank all those who have authorized us to publish here texts
that they jointly signed with Pierre Bourdieu - and our apologies to those
we were unable to trace.