"Cultural Capital: the Story of Pierre Bourdieu." PHILOSOPHER'S ZONE April 10, 2010.

He was a poor boy from a poor home, and being a poor boy from a poor home was important to his thought. Before the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu died eight years ago, he was the most quoted social scientist alive, and the most lauded public intellectual in France. He was trained in philosophy but decided that philosophy was not enough. Find out why this week in The Philosopher's Zone. . . . Download the podcast or read the transcript here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2010/2865075.htm.

"Bourdieu and Literature," Humanities Research Centre, University of Warwick, May 16, 2009.

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) was one of the pre-eminent figures in a French intellectual field that included Barthes, Blanchot, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard, and which launched semiology, deconstruction and postmodernism. Highly influential in the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, and highly visible in his later years as an outspoken public intellectual, Bourdieu’s legacy continues to inspire research and debate across national frontiers and academic disciplines. Supported by the Warwick Humanities Research Centre and the French Studies Society, the Bourdieu and Literature conference comes at a moment of growing interest in Bourdieu’s work on literature. Bringing together scholars and staff from across the faculties, the Bourdieu and Literature conference will provide both an introduction to Bourdieu’s work on literature, and a supportive workshop environment to test ideas. Speakers will demonstrate and explore the range and potential of Bourdieu’s theory and method of literary analysis; examine the place of language and literature in Bourdieu's work; and discuss recent attempts to take Bourdieu's theory of literary fields to the transnational level. Featuring internationally recognized keynotes Anna Boschetti, Jeremy Lane, Michael Grenfell and Neil Lazarus, this conference will attract delegates in both the humanities and the social sciences who have either an established or emerging interest in Bourdieu. Due to the generalizability of Bourdieu’s concepts and methodology, the Bourdieu and Literature conference will be relevant to researchers and academics working across the range of national literary traditions, including French, German, Italian and English. Sociologists will also benefit from this opportunity to reflect on an underexamined but central component in Bourdieu’s intellectual project. Visit the conference homepage here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/bl.

Prior, Nick. "Pithy, Polemical and Paradoxical." TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION May 8, 2008.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Political Interventions: Social Science and Political Action. London: Verso, 2008. A leading figure in the radical movements that swept France in the late 1990s, Bourdieu had become synonymous with critical opposition to the vagaries of an increasingly naturalised neoliberal agenda. He would no doubt have balked at the perverse (but predictable) decision to place eulogies from Lionel Jospin and Jacques Chirac alongside pictures of the megaphoned sociologist demonstrating before his occupation of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1998. He was no fan of the media, famously dedicating a whole book, On Television, to an analysis of the unconditional submission of television and journalism to unfettered market pressures. He was, in any case, much more than his public effigy permitted, not least one of the most formidable thinkers of the condition of modernity, its institutions, ideas and experiences. Engaged rather than enraged (curiously, the events of May 1968 seemed to bypass him somewhat), Bourdieu's political interventions span 40 years and are the subject of this fascinating collection of documents. The book is an English translation of Interventions 1961-2001, published in France in 2002. Ordered chronologically and thematically, it spans Bourdieu's early assessments of the Algerian experience during the ruptures of independence through to his damning critique of global economic imperialism. Middle sections document Bourdieu's critique of the education system, his role as adviser to state-ordained reports on pedagogy, diatribes against the collapse of the social welfare state and his vision of the collective European intellectual. All this is punctuated with regular commentary on tumultuous political events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the war in Kosovo, as well as pithy miscellanea, such as his feelings for Jean-Paul Sartre, against whose ideology of the free intellectual Bourdieu set himself. Most deep-thinking scholars are considerably more accessible in informal academic addresses, such as lectures and interviews, and this is certainly the case with Bourdieu, whose monographs can be dense and difficult to grasp. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=401791&c=2.

Lianos, Michaelis, ed. "Pierre Bourdieu: a Critical Tribute in Times of Uncertainty." SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH ONLINE 12.6 (2007).

Essays include:

• Prefaceby Michaelis Lianos;
• Pierre Bourdieu: Episteme, Polity and Critique by Michaelis Lianos;
• Que Reste-T-Il Des Héritiers Et De La Reproduction (1964-1971) Aujourd'hui? Questions, Méthodes, Concepts Et Réception D'une Sociologie De L'éducation by Jean-Claude Passeron;
• Cultural Capital, Cultural Knowledge and Ability by Alice Sullivan;
• Towards a Theory of Constrained Relativism: Comparing and Combining the Work of Pierre Bourdieu, Mary Douglas and Michael Thompson, and Alan Fiske by Marco Verweij
• La Distinction Indifférente by Christian Papilloud;
• Habitus and Reflexivity: Restructuring Bourdieu's Theory of Practice by Nicos Mouzelis
• Critical Sociology and Social History by Eric Hobsbawm;
• Raisonnements Circulaires : Retour Nostalgique à Lévy-Bruhl by Mary Douglas; and
• Bourdieu and Postcommunist Class Formation by William Outhwaite.

To access the entire issue, click here: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/6/contents.html.