The Field of Cultural Production

by Pierre Bourdieu, Randal Johnson

Overview

Durgaing the last two decades, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has become a dominant force in cultural activity ranging from taste in music and art to choices in food and lifestyles.

The Field of Cultural Production brings together Bourdieu's major essays on art and literature and provides the first introduction to Bourdieu's writings and theory of a cultural field that situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption.

Bourdieu develops a highly original approach to the study of literary and artistic works, addressing many of the key issues that have preoccupied literary art and cultural criticism in the last twentieth century: aesthetic value and canonicity, intertextuality, the institutional frameworks of cultural practice, the social role of intellectuals and artists, and structures of literary and artistic authority.

Bourdieu elaborates a theory of the cultural field which situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. He examines the individuals and institutions involved in making cultural products what they are: not only the writers and artists, but also the publishers, critics, dealers, galleries, and academies. He analyzes the structure of the cultural field itself as well as its position within the broader social structures of power.

The essays in his volume examine such diverse topics as Flaubert's point of view, Manet's aesthetic revolution, the historical creation of the pure gaze, and the relationship between art and power.

The Field of Cultural Porduction will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines: sociology and social theory, literature, art, and cultural studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231082877
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	04/21/1994
Series:	European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	322
Sales rank:	1,010,466
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Pierre Bourdieu is professor of Sociology at the College de France. His numerous other works include Homo Academicus and Language and Symbolic Power.

Table of Contents

Preface
Editor's Introduction: Pierre Bourdieu on Art, Literature and Culture
Part I. The Field of Cultural Production
1. The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed
2. The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy of Symbolic Goods
3. The Market of Symbolic Goods
Part II. Flaubert and the French Literary Field
4. Is the Structure of Sentimental Education an Instance of Social Self-analysis?
5. Field of Power, Literary Field and Habitus
6. Principles for a Sociology of Cultural Works
7. Flaubert's Point of View
Part III. The Pure Gaze: Essays on Art
8. Outline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception
9. Manet and the Institutionalization of Anomie
10. The Historical Genesis of a Pure Aesthetic
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Lisa Jardine

As we have come to expect from him, Pierre Bourdieu's lucid analysis of the field of cultural production once again provides us with key terms for udnerstanding the issues at the forefront of current critical debate. His accounts of the economy of symbolic capital and of cultural power relations will undoubtedly become classic formulations, shaping future work on the sociology of culture.

— Lisa Jardine, University of London

Editorial Reviews

Since the early 1970s, French sociologist Bourdieu has become a major theoretical voice in the critical study of cultural practices. This volume brings together Bourdieu's major essays on art, literature, and culture, published between 1968 and 1987. It includes articles appearing in English for the first time, others previously published in book and journals but not always readily accessible, and a series of three lectures presented as the Christian Gauss Seminars in Criticism at Princeton U. in 1986, here published for the first time in any language.

Booknews

Brings together Bourdieu's most important writings on art, literature, and aesthetics. Bourdieu's analysis of the economy of symbolic capital and of cultural power relations will undoubtedly become classic formulations.

Lisa Jardine

It is a coherent, stimulating and indispensable set of essays gathered in one book that affirm Bourdieu's place as the most interesting of sociologists of culture to think with.

Sociology - Kieran Flanagan

The Field of Cultural Production is a book about this kind of struggle as it takes place among the creators, distributors, and critics of cultural products, and it attempts to explain why this specialized conflict should be regarded as of primary importance in determinig the character of our cultural life. In another sense, the book is part of Bourdieu's continuing brief for his own conception of an intellectual mission, and it attempts to avoid the errors he perceives in elitism and populism by yoking their disparate valences to the tense balance of what he calls a "reflexive sociology."

Sean McCannn Quarterly

Bourdieu’s most significant work on cultural production

Media, Culture, and Society - David Hesmondhalgh

The Field of Cultural Production is fashioned as both an introduction to Bourdieu's sociology and as a survey of his major essays on art and literature.

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism - Tom Huhn

What distinguishes this book is that its author so convincingly, so thoroughly and so successfully transcends the dual- isms which attend the clumsy formulation of art and society and which lead expla- nation to the unhappy choices of textual- ism or contextualism. Bourdieu shows how misleading is the preposition 'and' in 'art and society'.

British Journal of Sociology - Gordon Fyfe

The Field of Cultural Production is a book about this kind of struggle as it takes place among the creators, distributors, and critics of cultural products, and it attempts to explain why this specialized conflict should be regarded as of primary importance in determinig the character of our cultural life. In another sense, the book is part of Bourdieu's continuing brief for his own conception of an intellectual mission, and it attempts to avoid the errors he perceives in elitism and populism by yoking their disparate valences to the tense balance of what he calls a "reflexive sociology."

American Quarterly - Sean McCann