Conversations with Bourdieu : The Johannesburg Moment by Michael Burawoy & Karl von Holdt

ISBN: 9781868145409

Wits University Press, 01 July 2012

Paperback | 208 pages

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) is the most influential sociologist of our time. His works take in education, culture, class, philosophy, religion, law, media, intellectuals, methodology, colonialism, kinship, and politics. In Conversations with Bourdieu, Michael Burawoy constructs a series of imaginary conversations between Bourdieu and his nemesis—Marxism—from which he silently borrowed so much.  Karl von Holdt, in turn, brings these conversations to South Africa, showing the relevance of Bourdieu's ideas to a country he never visited. Armed with Bourdieu, von Holdt takes up pressing social and political issues of contemporary South Africa. Conversations with Bourdieu pushes theory to its limits through dialogue—dialogue between theorists and dialogue between theory and the world it represents.