From Bourdieu to Cultural Sociology

This paper offers an account of Bourdieu’s rise to sociological ‘stardom’ in the last 30 years, giving special attention to the transnational dimensions of this process. It discusses the scope and relevance of his work to the field (in the making) of cultural sociology, showing how he contributed to its current form. The paper insists on the importance of assessing both the virtues and limits of Bourdieu’s intellectual legacy through the means of historicization and sociological self-understanding, these being preconditions that allow the furthering of the ‘progress of reason’ which Bourdieu himself located as at the core of scientific endeavours.