Pierre Bourdieu, French sociologist who was a public intellectual in the tradition of Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (socially acquired dispositions) was influential in recent postmodernist humanities and social sciences. His best-known work was Distinction (1979).
David Hesmondhalgh writes that: By 'cultural production' Bourdieu intends a very broad understanding of culture, in line with the tradition of classical sociology, including science (which in turn includes social science), law and religion, as well as expressive-aesthetic activities such as art, literature and music.
Bourdieu's work is built upon an attempt to transcend a series of oppositions which he thought characterized the social sciences (subjectivism/objectivism, micro/macro, freedom/determinism) of his time. His concepts of habitus, capital, and field were conceived with the intention of overcoming such oppositions. As a public intellectual[edit]
Through this journal, Bourdieu sought to denationalize social science, to break down the preconceived notions of ordinary and scholarly common sense, and to break out of established forms of scientific communication by commingling analysis, raw data, field documents, and pictorial illustrations.