Margins
The State Nobility book cover
The State Nobility
Elite Schools in the Field of Power
1989
First Published
4.15
Average Rating
503
Number of Pages
In this major new work, Pierre Bourdieu examines the distinctive forms of power―political, intellectual, bureaucratic, and economic―by means of which contemporary societies are governed. What kinds of competence are claimed by the bureaucrats and technocrats who govern us? And how do those who govern gain our recognition and acquiescence? Bourdieu examines in detail the work of consecration that is carried out by elite education systems―in France by the grande écoles, in the United States by the Ivy League schools, and in England by Oxford and Cambridge. Today, this "state nobility" has at its disposal an unprecedented range of powers and distinctive titles to justify its privilege. Bourdieu shows how it is the heir―structural and sometimes genealogical―of the noblesse de robe, which, in order to consolidate its position in relation to other forms of power, had to construct the modern state and the republican myths, meritocracy, and civil service that went along with it. Combining ethnographic description, historical documentation, statistical analysis, and theoretical argument, Bourdieu develops a wide-ranging and highly original account of the forms of power and governance that have come to prevail in our society today.
Avg Rating
4.15
Number of Ratings
60
5 STARS
38%
4 STARS
42%
3 STARS
17%
2 STARS
3%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads

Author

Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu
Author · 37 books

Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life. His work emphasized the role of practice and embodiment or forms in social dynamics and worldview construction, often in opposition to universalized Western philosophical traditions. He built upon the theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Georges Canguilhem, Karl Marx, Gaston Bachelard, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Erwin Panofsky, and Marcel Mauss. A notable influence on Bourdieu was Blaise Pascal, after whom Bourdieu titled his Pascalian Meditations. Bourdieu rejected the idea of the intellectual "prophet", or the "total intellectual", as embodied by Sartre. His best known book is Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, in which he argues that judgments of taste are related to social position. His argument is put forward by an original combination of social theory and data from surveys, photographs and interviews, in an attempt to reconcile difficulties such as how to understand the subject within objective structures. In the process, he tried to reconcile the influences of both external social structures and subjective experience on the individual (see structure and agency).

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved