Many of the traditions which we think of as very ancient in their origins were not in fact sanctioned by long usage over the centuries, but were invented comparatively recently. This book explores examples of this process of invention - the creation of Welsh and Scottish ‘national culture’; the elaboration of British royal rituals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the origins of imperial rituals in British India and Africa; and the attempts by radical movements to develop counter-traditions of their own. It addresses the complex interaction of past and present, bringing together historians and anthropologists in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism which poses new questions for the understanding of our history.

Over the past four decades, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died in 2002, he was considered to be the most influential sociologist in the world and a thinker on a par with Foucault and Lévi-Strauss—a public intellectual as important to his generation as Sartre was to his.
Sketch for a Self-Analysis is the ultimate outcome of Bourdieu’s lifelong preoccupation with reflexivity. Vehemently not an autobiography, this unique book is instead an application of Bourdieu’s theories to his own life and intellectual trajectory; along the way it offers compelling and intimate insights into the most important French intellectuals of the time—including Foucault, Sartre, Aron, Althusser, and de Beauvoir—as well as Bourdieu’s own formative experiences at boarding school and his moral outrage at the colonial war in Algeria.

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.

Do social classes really exist? Is disinterested action really possible? What do the family, the church, and the intellectual world have in common? Can morality be founded on hypocrisy? What is the "subject" of action? In this new volume, one of France's foremost social thinkers of our time responds to these major questions and to others, thus tracing the outlines of a work that could be called "Pierre Bourdieu by himself." In these texts, the author tries to go to the essential, that is, the most elementary and fundamental, questions. He thereby explains the philosophical principles that have led to his social science research and the idea of the human that guides his choices there. With the lucidity allowed by retrospect, Bourdieu brings out the fundamental theories of his greatest books, notably "Outline of a Theory of Practice" and "The Logic of Practice" (Stanford, 1990), and, with an eye to the future, presents the first results of his most recent work on the state, the anthropological moorings of the economy, and male domination. Bourdieu's theory is both a philosophy of science dedicated to revealing the objective relations that shape and underpin social life, and a philosophy of action that takes account of agents' dispositions as well as the structured situations in which they act. This philosophy of action is condensed in a small number of key concepts--habitus, field, capital--and it is defined by the two-way relationship between the objective structures of social fields and the incorporated structures of the habitus. All in all, this book should be an indispensable introduction to Bourdieu's work, not only to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, political science, and philosophy, but throughout the social sciences and humanities generally.

This highly acclaimed work, in which Pierre Bourdieu turns his attention to the academic world and offers a brilliant analysis of modern intellectual culture, is now available in paperback. The academy is shown to be not just a realm of dialogue and debate, but also a sphere of power in which reputations and careers are made, defended and destroyed.


Bourdieu constructs a map of the intellectual field in France and analyzes the forms of capital power, the lines of conflict and the patterns of change which characterize the system of higher education in France today.

Much orthodox economic theory is based on assumptions which are treated as self-evident: supply and demand are regarded as independent entities, the individual is assumed to be a rational agent who knows his interests and how to make decisions corresponding to them, and so on. But one has only to examine an economic transaction closely, as Pierre Bourdieu does here for the buying and selling of houses, to see that these abstract assumptions cannot explain what happens in reality. As Bourdieu shows, the market is constructed by the state, which can decide, for example, whether to promote private housing or collective provision. And the individuals involved in the transaction are immersed in symbolic constructions which constitute, in a strong sense, the value of houses, neighbourhoods and towns. The abstract and illusory nature of the assumptions of orthodox economic theory has been criticised by some economists, but Bourdieu argues that we must go further. Supply, demand, the market and even the buyer and seller are products of a process of social construction, and so-called 'economic' processes can be adequately described only by calling on sociological methods. Instead of seeing the two disciplines in antagonistic terms, it is time to recognize that sociology and economics are in fact part of a single discipline, the object of which is the analysis of social facts, of which economic transactions are in the end merely one aspect. This brilliant study by the most original sociologist of post-war France will be essential reading for students and scholars of sociology, economics, anthropology and related disciplines.

Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most influential critical social theorists of the second half of the twentieth century, once described sociology as "a combat sport." This comprehensive collection of his writings on politics and social science from the Algerian War of Independence in the early 1960s to the last text he published before his death bears out that this vision, far from being the product of a "turn" in the 1990s, was enduring throughout his life.

The Evolution of Culture seeks to explain the origins, evolution and character of human culture, from language, art, music and ritual to the use of technology and the beginnings of social, political and economic behavior. It is concerned not only with where and when human culture evolved, but also asks how and why. The book draws together original contributions by archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists and psychologists. By integrating evolutionary biology with the social sciences, it shows how contemporary evolutionary thinking can inform the study of the peculiarly human phenomenon of culture. The contributors call into question the gulf currently separating the natural from the cultural sciences. Human capacities for culture, they argue, evolved through standard processes of natural and sexual selection and can be properly analyzed as biological adaptations. The Evolution of Culture is fully referenced and indexed and contains a guide to further reading. It is accessibly written and will be sure to appeal to the growing multidisciplinary readership now asking questions about human origins.
-- from Amazon.com

Examining the widespread sense of the "difficulty" of science, this work considers why many people find it so hard to grasp how science works, why there is so much suspicion of its success, and why many still seek refuge in religion or New Age spirituality. The author draws on anthropological and psychological material, as well as physics, astronomy and chemistry, and provides a wealth of detail and scientific information.

作为1949年以来第一个在中华人民共和国进行精神医学研究的美国学者，凯博文在多层面上探讨了神经衰弱、抑郁症以及躯体症状之间的关系。本书为我们理解中国人在与家庭和国家的关系上的体验开启了一个窗口，同时也对中国人和美国人各自如何解释自身的疼痛与绝望处境进行了一个跨文化的比较。
“本书对疾病症状与社会之间的辩证关系的分析十分具有穿透力。这本强力著作不仅属于人类学与精神医学的先锋之作，而且也展示了作者对消除人类不幸与苦难的深切关注和担当。所有致力于改善健康照顾系统的人都应该阅读本书。”
——Joan M. Anderson, Current Anthropology
“此书堪称医学人类学界长期以来所期盼的最重要的一本著作。”
——Richard Shweder, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
“一本视野宽广、发人深省的医学人类学著作。”
——Roy Porter, Times Literary Supplement
“对跨文化精神医学具有重要贡献。”
——Paul Chodoff, M.D., Journal of the American Medical Association
“本书的田野研究写作精美，以至于历史学家都不断被其描述的中国共产主义政治实践中的那些重要时刻所吸引。作者以丰富细腻的笔触描写了中国人的社会关系，童年以及成长过程中出现的那些问题。”
——Jonathan Spence, Yale University
“这是到目前为止我们对中国精神健康问题的最好的研究。这是一本具有开创意义的著作。”
——Ezra F. Vogel, Harvard University

《遏止野火》作者布迪厄被称为“法国最后一位知识分子”，在西方知识界有着很大的影响。这两册论战文集（中译本合为一册，分上下篇），以“遏止野火”为名，向新自由主义宣战，尤其向新自由主义经济学及其实践宣战。这场斗争的实质是要“保卫社会”：保卫历来社会斗争赢取的成果。如今它们在“全球化”、“流动性”的名义下被系统性地拆毁；同时也是保卫对于“社会”的信仰——如今它们在新自由主义经济学的个人主义意识形态和方法论的攻击下岌岌可危。

本书概述了身体研究领域的最新进展，提出创新框架来分析具身体现，融贯了有关该主题的古典探讨与当代研究，力主将身体解读为社会之构成过程中的多维中介；并在此基础上铺陈一系列具体分析，从经济、文化、社交、工作到运动、音乐、技术，将身体与多个领域联系到一起，为研究者聚焦主题，引初学者进入殿堂。