Power is the central organizing principle of all social life, from culture and education to stratification and taste. And there is no more prominent name in the analysis of power than that of noted sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Throughout his career, Bourdieu challenged the commonly held view that symbolic power—the power to dominate—is solely symbolic. He emphasized that symbolic power helps create and maintain social hierarchies, which form the very bedrock of political life. By the time of his death in 2002, Bourdieu had become a leading public intellectual, and his argument about the more subtle and influential ways that cultural resources and symbolic categories prevail in power arrangements and practices had gained broad recognition.

 

David L. Swartz is assistant professor of sociology at Boston University and a senior editor of Theory and Society. He is the author of Culture & Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and coeditor of After Bourdieu: Influence, Critique, Elaboration.

— Thomas Medvetz, author of Think Tanks in America

— Neil Gross, author of Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher