This is the first of five volumes that will be based on lectures given by Pierre Bourdieu at
the Collège de France in the early 1980s under the title 'General Sociology'. In these lectures
Bourdieu sets out to define and defend sociology as an intellectual discipline giving it his
own distinctive twist. In doing so he introduces and clarifies all the key concepts for which
he has become so well-known such as field capital and habitus concepts that continue to
shape the way that sociology is practiced today. In this first volume Bourdieu focuses on the
fundamental social processes of naming and classifying the world the ways that social actors
use words to construct social objects and the struggles that arise from this. The sociologist
encounters a world that is already named already classified where objects and social
realities are marked by signs that have already been assigned to them. In order to avoid the
naiveté and confusion that stem from taking for granted a world that has been socially
constituted sociologists must examine the part played by words in the construction of social
things - or to put it differently the contribution that classification struggles a dimension
of all class struggles play in the constitution of classes including classes of age sex
race and social class. An ideal introduction to some of Bourdieu's most important concepts and
ideas this volume will be of great interest to the many students and scholars who study and
use Bourdieu's work across the social sciences and humanities and to general readers who want
to know more about the work of one of the most important sociologists and social thinkers of
the 20th century.
