This new study of the work of the influential French sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu is the first to place his work firmly in the context of developments both in the French postwar intellectual field and in postwar French society as a whole. Set against the background of rapid change and upheaval that has characterized postwar French society, culture, and politics, Bourdieu's work can be seen as offering a peculiarly perceptive analysis of France's problematic transition to an era of late capitalism.

Proceeding chronologically and thematically, this study traces the development of Bourdieu's thought, elucidating the relationship between the anthropological and sociological aspects of his work, examining his debt to Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Bachelard, and highlighting his antagonistic relationship with a series of contemporary intellectual figures and movements: Barthes, Lefebvre, Touraine, Sartre, Fanon, Foucault, Derrida, structuralism, and post-structuralism.

The result is an intelligent, clearly written, and exceptionally comprehensive introduction and overview of the life and work of one of the twentieth-century's key intellectual figures.