Pierre Bourdieu
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 August 2018
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 August 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0212
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 August 2018
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 August 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0212
Introduction
Pierre Bourdieu (b. 1930–d. 2002) was a towering figure in sociology and anthropology, both within and beyond his native France. During his long career, Bourdieu authored theoretical and empirical scholarship concerning a staggering array of topics, including but not limited to art, culture, education, politics, journalism, sociolinguistics, and academia itself. Bourdieu’s primary concern across much of this ambitious work was to test and extend his own understanding of social action, with its reliance on three interconnected terms: field, habitus, and capital. Bourdieu’s conception of social action borrows heavily from the structuralist thought associated with Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. He combined this structuralist approach with a nuanced phenomenology that emphasized embodiment. Bourdieu drew on Karl Marx’s ideas regarding class, as well as on Marx’s ideas relating to praxis and conflict. Max Weber influenced Bourdieu’s ideas about class, status, and the idea of fields. Gaston Bachelard shaped Bourdieu’s ideas concerning reflexivity and the proper construction of the methodological object. Kurt Lewin’s understanding about individuals’ relationships with fields guided Bourdieu’s own field theory. Ludwig Wittgenstein influenced Bourdieu’s appreciation for the practical logic that informs human behavior. A good way to begin to unravel Bourdieu’s thought is to appreciate his full-throttled opposition to rational choice theory, with its presumption that individuals actively generate their own behaviors through consultation of an explicit code for operations. Bourdieu’s vision of social action emphasizes the everyday dynamics of a practical logic that people apply to their own lives, whereby dispositions—as social and as structuring in their own way as any words or actions—shape actions. This lends itself to a theory of social reproduction as a process that works through these often murky dispositions, in a manner that makes it easy to fail to notice reproduction when it happens, or to misrecognize reproduction for something else. Bourdieu’s ideas remain relevant to the study of communication and the media. His critical ideas point toward important research questions concerning all of the familiar arenas of media and communication scholarship. The sources referenced here do not necessarily come from the field of communication, but rather from the more broadly imagined arena of communication and media study, which can be found (as the references indicate) across a wide range of academic pursuits.
General Overviews
A thorough understanding of how Bourdieu’s ideas relate to communication requires beginning with Bourdieu’s own essential works before moving on to his and others’ attempts to apply his framework to communication. Bourdieu’s oft-maligned writing style—full of dependent clauses, prolix asides, and carefully wrought applications of his own unusual terminology—can be quite demanding. Bourdieu insisted that his writing represented an attempt to thwart the social reproduction inherent in overly comfortable modes of expression. At the very least, this defense reveals a great deal about Bourdieu’s understanding of the communication process. It is important for communication scholars to be fully cognizant of Bourdieu’s basic arguments, and this means turning to Bourdieu’s own published work. Other authors and editors have helped to clarify Bourdieu’s thought and to point to connections with issues in communication.
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Article
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- Action Assembly Theory
- Action-Implicative Discourse Analysis
- Activist Media
- Adherence and Communication
- Adolescence and the Media
- Advertisements, Televised Political
- Advertising
- Advertising, Children and
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- Advocacy Journalism
- Agenda Setting
- Annenberg, Walter H.
- Apologies and Accounts
- Applied Communication Research Methods
- Argumentation
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advertising
- Attitude-Behavior Consistency
- Audience Fragmentation
- Audience Studies
- Authoritarian Societies, Journalism in
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bandwagon Effect
- Baudrillard, Jean
- Blockchain and Communication
- Blogs
- Bourdieu, Pierre
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- Broadcasting, Public Service
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- Civic Duty
- Civil Rights Movement and the Media, The
- CNN
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- Codes and Cultural Discourse Analysis
- Cognitive Dissonance
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- Communication Apprehension
- Communication Campaigns
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- Communication Law
- Communication Management
- Communication Networks
- Communication, Philosophy of
- Community Attachment
- Community Journalism
- Community Structure Approach
- Computational Journalism
- Computer-Mediated Communication
- Content Analysis
- Corporate Social Responsibility and Communication
- Crisis Communication
- Critical and Cultural Studies
- Critical Race Theory and Communication
- Cross-tools and Cross-media Effects
- Cultivation
- Cultural and Creative Industries
- Cultural Imperialism Theories
- Cultural Mapping
- Cultural Persuadables
- Cultural Pluralism and Communication
- Cyberpolitics
- 3D Media
- Death, Dying, and Communication
- Debates, Televised
- Deliberation
- Developmental Communication
- Diffusion of Innovations
- Digital Divide
- Digital Gender Diversity
- Digital Intimacies
- Digital Literacy
- Diplomacy, Public
- Distributed Work, Comunication and
- Documentary and Communication
- E-democracy/E-participation
- E-Government
- Elaboration Likelihood Model
- Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM)
- Embedded Coverage
- Entertainment
- Entertainment-Education
- Environmental Communication
- Ethnic Media
- Ethnography of Communication
- Experiments
- Families, Multicultural
- Family Communication
- Federal Communications Commission
- Feminist and Queer Game Studies
- Feminist Data Studies
- Feminist Journalism
- Feminist Theory
- Focus Groups
- Food Studies and Communication
- Freedom of the Press
- Friendships, Intercultural
- Gatekeeping
- Gender and the Media
- Global Englishes
- Global Media, History of
- Global Media Organizations
- Glocalization
- Goffman, Erving
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Habituation and Communication
- Health Communication
- Hegemony
- Hermeneutic Communication Studies
- Heuristics
- Homelessness and Communication
- Hook-Up and Dating Apps
- Hostile Media Effect
- Identification with Media Characters
- Identity, Cultural
- Image Repair Theory
- Implicit Measurement
- Impression Management
- Indexing
- Infographics
- Information and Communication Technology for Development
- Information Management
- Information Overload
- Information Processing
- Infotainment
- Innis, Harold
- Instructional Communication
- Integrated Marketing Communications
- Interactivity
- Intercultural Capital
- Intercultural Communication
- Intercultural Communication, Tourism and
- Intercultural Communication, Worldview in
- Intercultural Competence
- Intercultural Conflict Mediation
- Intercultural Dialogue
- Intercultural New Media
- Intergenerational Communication
- Intergroup Communication
- International Communications
- Interpersonal Communication
- Interpersonal LGBTQ Communication
- Interpretation/Reception
- Interpretive Communities
- Journalism
- Journalism, Accuracy in
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- Journalism and Trauma
- Journalism, Citizen
- Journalism, Citizen, History of
- Journalism Ethics
- Journalism, Interpretive
- Journalism, Peace
- Journalism, Tabloid
- Journalists, Violence against
- Knowledge Gap
- Language Ecology
- Lazarsfeld, Paul
- Leadership and Communication
- LGBTQ+ Family Communication
- LGBTQ+ People and Media Industries
- Mass Communication
- McLuhan, Marshall
- Media Activism
- Media Aesthetics
- Media and Time
- Media Bias
- Media Convergence
- Media Credibility
- Media Dependency
- Media Ecology
- Media Economics
- Media Economics, Theories of
- Media, Educational
- Media Effects
- Media Ethics
- Media Events
- Media Exposure Measurement
- Media, Gays and Lesbians in the
- Media Literacy
- Media Logic
- Media Management
- Media Policy and Governance
- Media Regulation
- Media, Social
- Media Sociology
- Media Streaming
- Media Systems Theory
- Merton, Robert K.
- Message Characteristics and Persuasion
- Mobile Communication Studies
- Muckraking
- Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Approaches to
- Multinational Organizations, Communication and Culture in
- Murdoch, Rupert
- Narrative
- Narrative Engagement
- Narrative Persuasion
- Net Neutrality
- News, Fake
- News Framing
- News Media Coverage of Women
- NGOs, Communication and
- Online Campaigning
- Open Access
- Organizational Change and Organizational Change Communicat...
- Organizational Communication
- Organizational Communication, Aging and
- Parasocial Theory in Communication
- Participation, Civic/Political
- Participatory Action Research
- Patient-Provider Communication
- Peacebuilding and Communication
- Perceived Realism
- Personalized Communication
- Persuasion and Social Influence
- Persuasion, Resisting
- Photojournalism
- Political Advertising
- Political Communication, Normative Analysis of
- Political Economy
- Political Knowledge
- Political Marketing
- Political Scandals
- Political Socialization
- Polls, Opinion
- Priming
- Product Placement
- Propaganda
- Proxemics
- Public Interest Communication
- Public Opinion
- Public Relations
- Public Sphere
- Queer Intercultural Communication
- Queer Migration and Digital Media
- Race and Communication
- Racism and Communication
- Radio Studies
- Reality Television
- Reasoned Action Frameworks
- Religion and the Media
- Reporting, Investigative
- Rhetoric and Communication
- Rhetoric and Intercultural Communication
- Rhetoric and Social Movements
- Rhetoric, Religious
- Rhetoric, Visual
- Risk Communication
- Rumor and Communication
- Schramm, Wilbur
- Science Communication
- Scripps, E. W.
- Selective Exposure
- Semiotics
- Sense-Making/Sensemaking
- Sesame Street
- Sex in the Media
- Small-Group Communication
- Social Capital
- Social Change
- Social Cognition
- Social Construction
- Social Identity Theory and Communication
- Social Interaction
- Social Movements
- Social Network Analysis
- Social Protest
- Sports Communication
- Stereotypes
- Strategic Communication
- Superdiversity
- Surveillance and Communication
- Symbolic Interactionism in Communication
- Synchrony in Intercultural Communication
- Tabloidization
- Telecommunications History/Policy
- Television
- Television, Cable
- Textual Analysis and Communication
- Third Culture Kids
- Third-Person Effect
- Time Warner
- Transgender Media Studies
- Transmedia Storytelling
- Two-Step Flow
- UNESCO
- United Nations and Communication
- Urban Communication
- Uses and Gratifications
- Video
- Video Deficit
- Video Games and Communication
- Violence in the Media
- Virtual Reality and Communication
- Visual Communication
- Web 2.0
- Web3 and Communication
- Web Archiving
- Webcare
- Whistleblowing
- Whiteness Theory in Intercultural Communication
- WikiLeaks
- Youth and Media
- Zines and Communication