No judgement of taste is innocent. In a word, we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu brilliantly illuminates this situation of the middle class in the modern world. France's leading sociologist focusses here on the French bourgeoisie, its tastes and preferences. Distinction is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind. In the course of everyday life people constantly choose between what they find aesthetically pleasing and what they consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Bourdicu bases his study on surveys that took into account the multitude of social factors that play a part in a Frenchperson's choice of clothing, furniture, leisure activities, dinner menus for guests, and many other matters of taste. What emerges from his analysis is that social snobbery is everywhere in the bourgeois world. The different aesthetic choices people make are all distinctions-that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. Taste is not pure. Bourdieu finds a world of social meaning in the decision to order bouillabaisse, in our contemporary cult of thinness, in the "California sports" such as jogging and cross-country skiing. The social world, he argues, functions simultaneously as a system of power relations and as a symbolic system in which minute distinctions of taste become the basis for social judgement. The topic of Bourdieu's book is a fascinating one: the strategies of social pretension are always curiously engaging. But the book is more than fascinating. It is a major contribution to current debates on the theory of culture and a challenge to the major theoretical schools in contemporary sociology.

《自我分析纲要》不是传记，而是布尔迪厄对自我的社会学分析。布尔迪厄对自己采取了批判反思的视角，仅仅选取了自身经历中从社会学观点来看直接相关的特征，也就是对社会学理解和解释必要的特征。他描述了他的童年经历和寄宿生活，20世纪50年代初他进入哲学场时的状况，从哲学转向人种学和社会学的蜕变过程，以及阿尔及利亚战争期间他所从事的调查，最终对自身的知识筹划提出了社会学解释：低微的出身与学业的成功产生了他分裂的习性，这种习性与他积累的学术资本一起，在知识场的作用下，导致他独特的实践——通过对立面的协调，把宏大的理论抱负与低微的研究对象相结合，以求创立一种总体性的实践的社会理论。

全书旨在对布迪厄的社会学诗学进行一个较为系统的批判性阐释和研究。除了序跋之外，全书共分七部分。导论“文化与权力”勾勒了布迪厄社会学诗学的主要特征，认为可分为文化研究视野中的、旨在考察艺术消费的社会学美学；以及文学现代性视野中的、旨在考察文学生产的文学社会学两部分。第一编“实践与反思：布迪厄社会学要旨”，侧重于从宏观层次描述布迪厄思想大系，主要是讨论哲学和社会学层面的布迪厄。第二编“文化再生产与符号暴力”简述了布迪厄若干重要社会理论，包括他的教育社会学、语言理论、性别支配理论、知识分子理论和阶级理论。第三编“趣味：区隔的逻辑”和第四编“文学现代性的别种解读：文化生产场理论”均为本书重点。前者探讨了布迪厄的社会学美学，后者论述了布迪厄文学场理论。结论部分批判性质疑了布迪厄社会学诗学的有效性限度。附录部分收录了一篇布迪厄社会学诗学的代表性译文。
本书是对法国著名社会学家布迪厄文化理论的介绍与研究，并对于中国语境中的历史文化实践进行了理论的运用与分析。布迪厄社会学文化学理论的精髓在于反对一切形式的符号控制，反对普遍存在的不平等。为了实现这一实践目的，他一方面借助于独特的概念工具和研究方法考察了人类行动的逻辑，从而 获得了他作为一个人类学家、社会学家甚至哲学家的崇高声誉；另一方面，他又在此基础上，分析了统治阶层是如何在获得被统治者共识的条件下，利用各种社会资源，进行合法性治理的。

This volume brings together Bourdieu's highly original writings on language and on the relations among language, power, and politics. Bourdieu develops a forceful critique of traditional approaches to language, including the linguistic theories of Saussure and Chomsky and the theory of speech-acts elaborated by Austin and others. He argues that language should he viewed not only as a means of communication but also as a medium of power through which individuals pursue their own interests and display their practical competence. Drawing on the concepts that are part of his distinctive theoretical approach. Bourdieu maintains that linguistic utterances or expressions can be understood as the product of the relation between a linguistic market" and it "linguistic habitus." When individuals use language in particular ways, they deploy their accumulated linguistic resources and implicitly adapt their words to the demands of the social held or market that is their audience. Hence every linguistic interaction, however personal or insignificant it may seem, hears the traces of the social structure that it both expresses and helps to reproduce. Bourdieu's account sheds fresh light on the ways in which linguistic usage varies according to considerations such as class and gender. It also opens up a new approach to the ways in which language is used in the domain of politics. For politics is, among other things, the arena in which words are deeds and the symbolic character of power is at stake. This volume, by one of the leading social thinkers in the world today, represents a major contribution to the study of language and power. It will be of interest to students throughout the social sciences and humanities, especially in sociology, politics, anthropology, linguistics, and literature.

《世界的苦难》是布尔迪厄晚年与其他22位合作者以细腻的情感和认真的观察及倾听，耗时三年访谈数百人所写就的田野调查著作。通过一个个以访谈形式出现的鲜活的生活史个案，展示了当代法国社会普通人日常生活中的种种困难与痛苦，并透过社会学的解释，揭示出痛苦背后深刻的社会和政治根源 ，以及人与社会的复杂关系。本书是布尔迪厄将学者责任与公民使命融为一体，集中探讨弱势群体艰难处境的最著名成果。在看似平淡的个人生活史的叙述中蕴含着震撼人心的苦难真相。

本书由三个部分组成，第一部分是诠释性的，它通过勾勒出布迪厄有关知识、实践和社会的理论结构及其学术图景的轮廓，向人们展示了布迪厄著作的广博体系和内在理路；第二部分是分析性的，主要是在芝加哥大学研讨班所展开的精心构思的对话内容，在这一部分，布迪厄澄清了他的理论研究实践和经验研究实践的全部重要之处，并对这两方面的实践进行了反思；第三部分以巴黎研讨班的讨论为基础，为1988年春天布迪厄在法国社会科学高等研究中心为他的研究生讨论课所做的导论性质的发言。在这些讨论课上，布迪厄没有灌输某一组概念，而是强调一种产生社会学创造力的一般性倾向，他倡导并采纳了一种总体性的自我指涉教学法。

《实践感》是布迪厄的最重要著作。通过对卡比利亚(阿尔及利亚)柏柏尔人社会的观察和研究,作者反思自身的社会学实践,揭示并分析了实践逻辑与学术性思维的差异,指出人类学研究要成为真正的科学,就必须对科学实践和行为和工具,对研究者与其对象的关系实施客观化。该书有助于读者全面了解作者的学术思想及其在社会学理论认识和科学实践方面创立的一系列概念。
《实践感》是布迪厄的最重要著作。通过对卡比利亚(阿尔及利亚)柏柏尔人社会的观察和研究,作者反思自身的社会学实践,揭示并分析了实践逻辑与学术性思维的差异,指出人类学研究要成为真正的科学,就必须对科学实践和行为和工具,对研究者与其对象的关系实施客观化。该书有助于读者全面了解作者的学术思想及其在社会学理论认识和科学实践方面创立的一系列概念。