Bourdieu, Pierre (1930–2002)

Pierre Bourdieu originally studied philosophy at the École normale supérieure in Paris. He went on to pursue a series of empirical studies of vast areas of society, while developing a considerable theoretical apparatus aimed at bridging microand macrolevel social analyses.

Regarded as both a sociologist and an anthropologist, he nevertheless sought throughout his career to go beyond such bounded fields of specialization, as well as the disciplinary classifications shaping them. This objective, which he perceived as implicating both the construction of the research object and the researcher's own role, marks his encounter with law. He placed law, its institutions, and its agents in the broader context of law's interrelationship with social forces other than those immediately at stake only in the microcosm of law. This enabled ...