Pierre Bourdieu: a life of resistance to its times

This paper sets out to consider the life of Pierre Bourdieu as one of resistance to its times. This resistance was dispositional, theoretical and practical. The first related to his own background and reaction to his social trajectory. The second was his academic response to and the position he took up vis-à-vis the theoretical sphere which surrounded him. The third involved the very many interventions he made into the political world on behalf on a number of issues. I shall argue that all three should be seen as logically symbiotic and complementary to the resistant stance which characterised Bourdieu’s life. I have elsewhere written extensively about Bourdieu’s theory of practice (Grenfell 1998, 2004, 2005). In the present context, I shall take this theory as axiomatic and concentrate more on first and second of these dimensions of resistance