The everyday practice of photography by millions of amateur photographers - the family snapshots, the holiday prints, the wedding portraits - may seem to be a spontaneous and highly personal activity. But Pierre Bourdieu and his associates show that few cultural activities are more structured and systematic than the social uses of this ordinary art.

Education depends crucially on language; knowledge and skills are taught largely through a process of linguistic exchange. But how much of the language used by teachers and professors is actually understood by students? To what extent does the social background of students affect their capacity to understand the language used in the classroom or the lecture hall? Why do students and teachers overestimate the success of the educational process and underestimate the degree of misunderstanding involved?

Museums and art galleries appear to be and would claim to be open to all and yet, in fact, they are visited only by a small segment of the population. Who are those whose love of art brings them into museums? What distinguishes them from the majority of people who exclude themselves or who are effectively excluded?

This work examines the distinctive forms of power - political, intellectual, bureaucratic and economic - by means of which contemporary societies are governed. What kinds of competence are claimed by the bureaucrats and technocrats who administer our societies? And how do those who govern come to gain the recognition of those who are governed by them?

This critique of scholastic reason can be made in the name of Pascal because his thought expressed the features of human existence which the scholastic outlook ignores - his concern with symbolic power, his refusal of the ambition of foundation, his attention, devoid of all populist naivete, to ordinary people and his determination to seek the raison d'etre of the seemingly most illogical behaviour rather than condemning or mocking it.

This text speaks out against the new myths of our time - especially those associated with neo-liberalism - and offers a defence of the public interest. The withdrawal of the state from many areas of social life in recent years - housing, health, social services, etc. - has produced growing despair in the most deprived sections of the population; the dismantling of public welfare in the name of private enterprise, flexible markets and global competitiveness is increasing the misery of those who have suffered most. In this uncompromising attack on neo-liberalism and those who champion it - from...

This text speaks out against the new myths of our time - especially those associated with neo-liberalism - and offers a defence of the public interest. The withdrawal of the state from many areas of social life in recent years - housing, health, social services, etc. - has produced growing despair in the most deprived sections of the population; the dismantling of public welfare in the name of private enterprise, flexible markets and global competitiveness is increasing the misery of those who have suffered most. In this uncompromising attack on neo-liberalism and those who champion it - from...

Male domination is so anchored in our unconscious that we hardly perceive it any more; it is so much in line with our expectations that we find it difficult to call into question. Pierre Bourdieu's ethnographic description of Kabyle society, a veritable reservoir of the Mediterranean unconscious, provides a powerful instrument to dissolve taken-for-granted truths and explore the symbolic structures of this androcentric unconscious which survives in today's men and women. But the discovery of permanences obliges us to overturn the habitual manner in which we frame the problem. How does the...

Male domination is so anchored in our unconscious that we hardly perceive it any more; it is so much in line with our expectations that we find it difficult to call into question. Pierre Bourdieu's ethnographic description of Kabyle society, a veritable reservoir of the Mediterranean unconscious, provides an extremely powerful instrument to dissolve taken-for-granted truths and explore the symbolic structures of this androcentric unconscious which survives in today's men and women.

Adressing a range of issues and debates in the natural and social sciences, this work provides a sociological analysis of science which enables readers to understand the social mechanisms which shape scientific practice.