Pierre Bourdieu

The French social philosopher Pierre Bourdieu is now recognised as one of the major thinkers of the twentieth century. In a career of over fifty years, Bourdieu studied a wide range of topics: education, culture, art, politics, economics, literature, law, and philosophy. Throughout these studies, Bourdieu developed a highly specialised series of concepts that he referred to as his "thinking tools", which were used to uncover the workings of contemporary society. Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts highlights his most important concepts and examines them in detail. Each chapter deals with an individual concept and is written to be of immediate use to the student with little or no previous knowledge of Bourdieu. This new edition of the leading text is entirely revised and updated and includes new essays on Methodology, Politics and Social Space.

Reviews of the first edition: "This collection is highly admirable for its clarity and thoroughness, and should be of great interest to anthropologists and others who are new to, or familiar with, Bourdieu's oeuvre." – Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"The book manages that extraordinary feat of offering both accessible introductions to Bourdieu’s concepts that are 'good to think with’ whilst also offering a depth of analysis that will engage scholars already familiar with Bourdieu’s work. Whether a chapter says something new about familiar concepts like habitus, field, or capital, or it introduces less discussed concepts like conatus, the writing stretches the reader’s understanding of what sociological theory can be." – Arthur Frank, University of Calgary, Canada

Michael Grenfell is Professor of Education at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland