This collection brings together for the first time a set of researchers whose research methodologies centre on Bourdieu's concept of habitus. Full of insight and innovation, the book is an essential read for anyone wanting to know more about approaches to social theory and its application in research.

This collection brings together for the first time a set of researchers whose research methodologies centre on Bourdieu's concept of habitus. Full of insight and innovation, the book is an essential read for anyone wanting to know more about approaches to social theory and its application in research.

Pierre Bourdieu’s contributions to the theory and practice of social research are far reaching. Possibly the most prominent sociologist in recent times, his work has touched on a myriad of topics and has influenced scholars in multiple disciplines. Throughout Bourdieu’s work, emphasis is placed on the linkage between the practice of social research and its relationship to social theory. This book honours Bourdieu’s commitment to the inextricable relationship between social theory and research in social science. In this volume, authors from all over the world utilize key concepts coined by Bourdieu, specifically his concept of capitals, habitus, and the field, and attempt to test them using quantitative survey data. The focus of this volume is how researchers can take key elements of Bourdieu’s work and apply them to the analysis of quantitative data on a variety of topics. Throughout the volume, issues of the possible interpretations of concepts and measurement validity are focused upon in a language that can be appreciated by new and experienced researchers alike. This volume is useful for courses where the linkage between theory and research is emphasized, at both the upper undergraduate and general postgraduate level. In addition to serving as a teaching tool, the articles within the volume will be invaluable to any scholar interested in working with Bourdieu’s concepts in quantitative research.

While education researchers have drawn on the work of a wide diversity of theorists over the years, much contemporary theory building in these areas has revolved around the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Theory as Method in Research develops the capacity of students, researchers and teachers to successfully put Bourdieu's ideas to work in their own research and prepare them effectively for conducting Masters and Doctoral scholarships. Structured around four core themes, this book provides a range of research case studies exploring educational identities, educational inequalities, school leadership and management, and research in teacher education. Issues as diverse as Chinese language learning and identity, school leadership in Australia and the school experience of Afro-Trinidadian boys, are covered, intertwined with a set of innovative approaches to theory application in education research. This collection brings together, in one comprehensive volume, a set of education researchers who place Pierre Bourdieu's key concepts such as habitus, capital and field at the centre of their research methodologies. Full of insight and innovation, the book is an essential read for practitioners, student teachers, researchers and academics who want to harness the potential of Bourdieu's core concepts in their own work, thereby helping to bridge the gap between theory and method in education research.

This is the second of five volumes based on the lectures given by Pierre Bourdieu at the Collège de France in the early 1980s under the title ‘General Sociology’. In these lectures, Bourdieu sets out to define and defend sociology as an intellectual discipline, and in doing so he introduces and clarifies all the key concepts which have come to define his distinctive intellectual approach. In this volume, Bourdieu focuses on two of his most important and influential concepts: habitus and field. For the social scientist, the object of study is neither the individual nor the group but the relation between these two manifestations of the social in bodies and in things: that is, the obscure, dual relation between the habitus – as a system of schemas of perception, appreciation and action – and the field as a system of objective relations and a space of possible actions and struggles aimed at preserving or transforming the field. The relation between the habitus and the field is a two-way process: it is a relation of conditioning, where the field structures the habitus, and it is also a relation of knowledge, with the habitus helping to constitute the field as a world that is endowed with meaning and value. The specificity of social science lies in the fact that it takes as its object of knowledge a reality that encompasses agents who take this same reality as the object of their own knowledge. An ideal introduction to some of Bourdieu’s most important concepts and ideas, this volume will be of great interest to the many students and scholars who study and use Bourdieu’s work across the social sciences and humanities, and to general readers who want to know more about the work of one of the most important sociologists and social thinkers of the 20th century.

This book is the first of three volumes of HabitusAnalysis that take the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu as a starting point to develop a methodical approach to the habitus of social actors. However, the concept of habitus and Bourdieu’s approach to language are somewhat disputed while his relationist epistemology is seldom paid tribute to. The present volume therefore in its first part deals with Bourdieu’s roots in relationist Neo-Kantian philosophy, the basic traits of his relationist sociology. The second part examines Bourdieu’s theoretical and empirical work on language before elaborating its own praxeological concept of language use that opens the road to a methodically and theoretically sound reconstruction of the habitus of social actors. In the second volume of HabitusAnalysis we will carefully re-read Bourdieu’s theory in order to develop a disposition-based theory of the habitus that emphasizes the creative potential of the linkage between mental orientations and socio-structural processes, classification and classes, as well as dispositions and positions. The method presented in the third volume will facilitate a detailed empirical analysis of the creative transformations operated by the habitus in relation with the social structures of domination and the dynamics of social differentiation.

This is the second of five volumes based on the lectures given by Pierre Bourdieu at the Collège de France in the early 1980s under the title 'General Sociology'. In these lectures, Bourdieu sets out to define and defend sociology as an intellectual discipline, and in doing so he introduces and clarifies all the key concepts which have come to define his distinctive intellectual approach. In this volume, Bourdieu focuses on two of his most important and influential concepts: habitus and field. For the social scientist, the object of study is neither the individual nor the group but the relation between these two manifestations of the social in bodies and in things: that is, the obscure, dual relation between the habitus – as a system of schemas of perception, appreciation and action – and the field as a system of objective relations and a space of possible actions and struggles aimed at preserving or transforming the field. The relation between the habitus and the field is a two-way process: it is a relation of conditioning, where the field structures the habitus, and it is also a relation of knowledge, with the habitus helping to constitute the field as a world that is endowed with meaning and value. The specificity of social science lies in the fact that it takes as its object of knowledge a reality that encompasses agents who take this same reality as the object of their own knowledge. An ideal introduction to some of Bourdieu's most important concepts and ideas, this volume will be of great interest to the many students and scholars who study and use Bourdieu's work across the social sciences and humanities, and to general readers who want to know more about the work of one of the most important sociologists and social thinkers of the 20th century.