Bourdieu and Data Analysis: Methodological Principles and Practice

Grenfell, Michael and Lebaron, Frederic (eds.) (2014) Bourdieu and Data Analysis: Methodological Principles and Practice , Bern, CH. Peter Lang, 333pp.

Record type: Book

Abstract

Pierre Bourdieu is now regarded as one of the foremost social philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in a small village in the French Pyrenees, his extraordinary academic trajectory took him to the leading academic training schools of Paris. Eventually, he was nominated as ‘Chair’ at the College de France; that most prestigious institution which groups together just 52 of leading French academics, philosophers and scientists.

Bourdieu’s output was voluminous. Beginning with ethnographies of the Bearn and Algeria he went on to offer extensive studies of education, culture, art, and language. For much of this time, Bourdieu was regarded as a sociologist, and he had a major influence in this academic field. However, increasingly he became a public figure rivalling the reputations of such writers as Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Foucault as the ‘public intellectual’. His interventions in politics became more frequent and he took up with a number of pressure groups in mounting what he called ‘acts of resistance’ to the dominant political, economic and social trends of the day. Later, he published further work on the media, painting, economics and gender politics. In 1992, he also published The Weight of the World, an extensive series of accounts of ‘social suffering’ across French society. This work projected Bourdieu into the media limelight and became a bestseller. From this point, Bourdieu increasingly offered his theory and practice as a kind of ‘philosophy for everyman’, as a way of coping with contemporary living.

Bourdieu therefore had influence in both an academic field, across several disciplines, as well as being of interest to the general public. There are now several commentaries on his work. However, it is generally agreed that the future of Bourdieusian studies and applications lays in developing methodological techniques for use in such work. Bourdieu used qualitative/ ethnographic approaches extensively; he also had recourse to statistics, in particular, Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), and other Geometric Data Analysis (GDA) techniques.

The book draws on an extensive field of specialists who are all publicly recognised from previous publications on Bourdieu for using his ideas in their empirical research. It is offered as an edited volume. However, it includes a series of linking narratives, which make the book very much an integrated text. The editors have also provided concise guidelines to contributing authors in order to aim for a commonality of approach across the chapters.

The book sets out to do what no other does: namely to bring together experts in the respective qualitative and quantitative Bourdieusian research fields.

A General Introduction to the book sets the scene in terms of the methodological challenges of operationalising Bourdieu in practice. A General Conclusion summarises key methodological points. The rest of the book is then divided into Three parts. Parts II and III can be seen very much as practical exemplification of Bourdieusian methodology. However, the book overall locates these in the context of his Theory of Practice.

Specifically, Part I is an extended introductory essay. This chapter shows how issues of method and technique sit within Bourdieu’s social philosophy. Here, his major concepts are explained, together with their underlying epistemology. The way his conceptual framework guides an overall research strategy is also set out: Constructing the Research Object; Field Analysis; and Participant Objectivation. In this essay the demands of Qualitative and Quantitative approaches in working with Bourdieu’s philosophical ideas and practical ambitions are considered.

Part II then deals with Qualitative approaches; Part III with Quantitative and MCA/ GDA. The chapters in these parts are constructed around particular empirical examples: and a range of topics analogous to many of Bourdieu’s own studies is offered – Education, Economics, Language, Politics, Culture and Art. Each is exemplified by detailed data analysis. In this way, the book is not just a series of stand-alone chapters. Parts II and III are each also preceded and followed up with expert, specialist commentaries on the particular methodological approach under consideration, raising issues concerning the strengths and weaknesses of the specific techniques deployed. In this way, the book focuses on methodological procedures and techniques in order to highlight the potential and limitations of the various designs and instruments of analysis when set within a Bourdieusian framework.

The book aims to show how a selection and integration of approaches and techniques need to be adopted if we are to make the most of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework.

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