Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts

The French social philosopher Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) is now recognised as one of the major thinkers of the twentieth century. In a career of over fifty years, Bourdieu studied a wide range of topics: education, culture, art, politics, economics, literature, law, and philosophy. Throughout these studies, Bourdieu developed a highly specialised series of concepts that he referred to as his "thinking tools", which were used to uncover the workings of contemporary society. "Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts" takes a selection of his most important concepts and examines them in detail. Each chapter deals with an individual concept and are written so as to be of immediate use to the student with little or no previous knowledge of Bourdieu. At the same time, each chapter also develops various dimensions around each concept to make the coverage of interest to the more experienced reader.