The book ‘Bourdieu: A Critical Introduction’, authored by Prof Tony Schirato and Prof Mary Roberts from the University of Macau (UM) Department of Communication, has been published by the respected academic publisher Allen & Unwin. The book provides a critical introduction to, and account of, the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.
Bourdieu’s work has been hugely influential in disciplines across the social sciences and humanities for decades, yet Schirato and Roberts argue that few scholars are using Bourdieu’s work to its full potential. They offer a systematic account of Bourdieu’s full body of work, from his early research in Algeria to his last lectures in Paris. This critical introduction to Bourdieu is essential reading for all Bourdieu scholars, and for researchers and thinkers using Bourdieu’s work in their own social and cultural analysis.
What makes this book particularly valuable is that it provides a contextualised account of Bourdieu’s major sociological works and the developments that his scholarly career undergoes, starting from his ethnographic writing in Algeria, then across his highly influential educational work, his ‘cultural turn’ where he analyses the logics, values and imperatives that inform the fields of art and literature, and finally through to his more politically oriented and polemical work directed against global capitalism. The other significant aspect of this book is that it traces and explains, in detail, the development of the theoretical ideas and concepts – reproduction, the habitus, cultural field, cultural capital, distinction, symbolic power – for which Bourdieu is best known. These two features are unique to the scholarship in Bourdieu studies. The prominent and highly regarded cultural theorist Prof John Frow from Sydney University,described it as ‘The best book in English on Bourdieu’s work’.
