Much orthodox economic theory is based on assumptions which are treated as self-evident: supply and demand are regarded as independent entities, the individual is assumed to be a rational agent who knows his interests and how to make decisions corresponding to them, and so on. But one has only to examine an economic transaction closely, as Pierre Bourdieu does here for the buying and selling of houses, to see that these abstract assumptions cannot explain what happens in reality.As Bourdieu shows, the market is constructed by the state, which can decide, for example, whether to promote private housing or collective provision. And the individuals involved in the transaction are immersed in symbolic constructions which constitute, in a strong sense, the value of houses, neighbourhoods and towns.The abstract and illusory nature of the assumptions of orthodox economic theory has been criticised by some economists, but Bourdieu argues that we must go further. Supply, demand, the market and even the buyer and seller are products of a process of social construction, and so-called 'economic' processes can be adequately described only by calling on sociological methods. Instead of seeing the two disciplines in antagonistic terms, it is time to recognize that sociology and economics are in fact part of a single discipline, the object of which is the analysis of social facts, of which economic transactions are in the end merely one aspect.This brilliant study by the most original sociologist of post-war France will be essential reading for students and scholars of sociology, economics, anthropology and related disciplines.

2019 film by Jérémy Clapin

On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.

2012 film by François Ozon

2019 film by Nadav Lapid

With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith. What does it mean to be modern? What difference does the scientific method make? The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology, and phrenology, never made. But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, there exists another seemingly contrary one: the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature. The ozone debate is such a hybrid, in Latour's analysis, as are global warming, deforestation, even the idea of black holes. As these hybrids proliferate, the prospect of keeping nature and culture in their separate mental chambers becomes overwhelming--and rather than try, Latour suggests, we should rethink our distinctions, rethink the definition and constitution of modernity itself. His book offers a new explanation of science that finally recognizes the connections between nature and culture--and so, between our culture and others, past and present. Nothing short of a reworking of our mental landscape. "We Have Never Been Modern" blurs the boundaries among science, the humanities, and the social sciences to enhance understanding on all sides. A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and replacing the rest with a broader, fairer, and finer sense of possibility.

Science and technology have immense authority and influence in our society, yet their working remains little understood. The conventional perception of science in Western societies has been modified in recent years by the work of philosophers, sociologists and historians of science. In this book Bruno Latour brings together these different approaches to provide a lively and challenging analysis of science, demonstrating how social context and technical content are both essential to a proper understanding of scientific activity. Emphasizing that science can only be understood through its practice, the author examines science and technology in action: the role of scientific literature, the activities of laboratories, the institutional context of science in the modern world, and the means by which inventions and discoveries become accepted. From the study of scientific practice he develops an analysis of science as the building of networks. Throughout, Bruno Latour shows how a lively and realistic picture of science in action alters our conception of not only the natural sciences but also the social sciences and the sociology of knowledge in general. This stimulating book, drawing on a wealth of examples from a wide range of scientific activities, will interest all philosophers, sociologists and historians of science, scientists and engineers, and students of the philosophy of social science and the sociology of knowledge.

This highly original work presents laboratory science in a deliberately skeptical way: as an anthropological approach to the culture of the scientist. Drawing on recent work in literary criticism, the authors study how the social world of the laboratory produces papers and other "texts," and how the scientific vision of reality becomes that set of statements considered, for the time being, too expensive to change. The book is based on field work done by Bruno Latour in Roger Guillemin's laboratory at the Salk Institute and provides an important link between the sociology of modern sciences and laboratory studies in the history of science.

科学家如何工作？他们如何“发现”科学事实？为试图回答这些问题，法国著名科学社会学家布鲁诺·拉图尔以及英国社会学家史蒂夫·伍尔加深入到美国的一个神经内分泌学实验室并与那里的教授共度两年时光，对科学家进行观察，看他们如何选择课题和申请基金，如何从事研究和发表论文，如何评级评奖等等。作者以自然主义的方式研究科学，特别探讨了科学的社会制约因素，触及人性、社会、理性和知识这些更大的问题，从一个全新的视角对科学事实的建构做了独到的诠释。本书是科学社会学也是国外社会学研究的前沿领域SSK的经典之作。
以色列著名哲学家约瑟夫·阿伽西曾说：“科学是现代文化的一个内在组成部分。在某些意义上孤立地看待科学也情有可原，但是没有注意到孤立的图景可能歪曲图景本身，这将导致混乱。而被扭曲的图景会产生误导作用。” 的确，在科学研究日益精细化的今天，孤立、片面地看待科学以及与之相关的问题早已经与这时代格格不入了。因此，法国著名科学哲学家布鲁诺·拉图尔提出：“我们调查研究的目的是开辟一条不同的途径：走近科学，绕过科学家们的说法去熟悉事实的产生，然后，返回自己的家，用一种不属于分析语言的元语言来分析研究者所做的事。总之，重要的是去做所有人类文化学志学者们所做的事，并把人文科学通常的义务论用于科学:使自己熟悉一个领域，并保持独立和距离。”在库恩之后，科学论的视角发生了转换：“我们都关心获得知识的动态过程，更甚关心科学成品的逻辑结构 ”，“要分析科学知识的发展就必须考虑科学的实际活动方式 ”。当然，在这一被欧洲科学社会学注重的科学“实质性理论 ”(即科学知识过程)的形成过程中，巴黎学派的拉图尔功不可没。原因是：一方面，他把对科学知识的研究从“社会建构 ”转向了“科学实践 ”，提出了“实验室生活”、“科学事实观”、“黑箱论”、“行动者网络”等一系列科学事实;另一方面，他在科学实践中充分借用了人类学学科独有的“整体观 ”、“参与式观察 ”、“对他者的研究”、“文化相对论”等一系列研究原则和方法，使这些科学事实变得更具“真实性”和“可靠性”，在欧洲科学哲学研究中掀起了一股“实验室研究风潮”。

Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the world's leading social theorists to how we understand society and the 'social'. Bruno Latour's contention is that the word 'social' as used by Social Scientists has become laden with assumptions to the point where it has become a misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is used to indicate a stabilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of material, in a comparable way to an adjective such as 'wooden' or 'steely'. Rather than simply indicating what is already assembled together, it is now used in a way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process of assembling: and a type of material, distinct from others. Latour shows why 'the social' cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts to provide a 'social explanation' of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past, the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of 'the social' to redefine the notion and allow it to trace connections again. It will then be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences, but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work examining the 'assemblages' of nature, Latour finds it necessary to scrutinize thoroughly the exact content of what is assembled under the umbrella of Society. This approach, a 'sociology of associations' has become known as Actor-Network-Theory, and this book is an essential introduction both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network-Theory, or the ideas of one of its most influential proponents.

What is the nature of the modern state? How did it come into being and what are the characteristics of this distinctive field of power that has come to play such a central role in the shaping of all spheres of social, political and economic life?<br /><br />In this major work the great sociologist Pierre Bourdieu addresses these fundamental questions. Modifying Max Weber’s famous definition, Bourdieu defines the state in terms of the monopoly of legitimate physical and symbolic violence, where the monopoly of symbolic violence is the condition for the possession and exercise of physical violence. The state can be reduced neither to an apparatus of power in the service of dominant groups nor to a neutral site where conflicting interests are played out: rather, it constitutes the form of collective belief that structures the whole of social life. The ‘collective fiction’ of the state Ð a fiction with very real effects - is at the same time the product of all struggles between different interests, what is at stake in these struggles, and their very foundation.<br /><br />While the question of the state runs through the whole of Bourdieu’s work, it was never the subject of a book designed to offer a unified theory. The lecture course presented here, to which Bourdieu devoted three years of his teaching at the Collège de France, fills this gap and provides the key that brings together the whole of his research in this field. This text also shows ‘another Bourdieu’, both more concrete and more pedagogic in that he presents his thinking in the process of its development. While revealing the illusions of ‘state thought’ designed to maintain belief in government being oriented in principle to the common good, he shows himself equally critical of an ‘anti-institutional mood’ that is all too ready to reduce the construction of the bureaucratic apparatus to the function of maintaining social order.<br /><br />At a time when financial crisis is facilitating the hasty dismantling of public services, with little regard for any notion of popular sovereignty, this book offers the critical instruments needed for a more lucid understanding of the wellsprings of domination.

Power is the central organizing principle of all social life, from culture and education to stratification and taste. And there is no more prominent name in the analysis of power than that of noted sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Throughout his career, Bourdieu challenged the commonly held view that symbolic power - the power to dominate - is solely symbolic. He emphasized that symbolic power helps create and maintain social hierarchies, which form the very bedrock of political life. By the time of his death in 2002, Bourdieu had become a leading public intellectual, and his argument about the more subtle and influential ways that cultural resources and symbolic categories prevail in power arrangements and practices had gained broad recognition. In "Symbolic Power, Politics, and Intellectuals", David L. Swartz delves deeply into Bourdieu's work to show how central - but often overlooked - power and politics are to an understanding of sociology. Arguing that power and politics also stand at the core of Bourdieu's sociology, Swartz illuminates Bourdieu's political project for the social sciences, as well as Bourdieu's own political activism, explaining how sociology is not just science but also a crucial form of political engagement.

导 言

在《将负量概念引入哲学的尝试》( Essay on the Introduction of the Concept of Negative Grandeur in Philosophy)中，康德设想了一个有十分程度的吝啬、而又力争十二分程度的兄弟之爱的人，与另外一个有三分程度的吝啬并且有能力达成七分程度慷慨目标的人——而这个人只做出了四分程度的慷慨行为——相对比。他得出结论，虽然按照行为来衡量——二比四——前者不可辩驳地要比后者低劣，但实际在道德上，他比后者更为高尚。我们或许应该使用一种类似于此的算术式的价值评估来评判科学著作……社会科学明显是处在一个有十分程度的吝啬的阵营里，而且，如果我们知道如何以康德的方式来将它们必须克服的社会力量的因素考虑进来，我们无疑就能够更为准确地对它们的价值进行评估。当所讨论的问题是一个其影响遍及所有社会科学学科的特殊目标时，这一点就更确真无疑了。这种特殊的目标，即语言，是整体性的和不可分割的，在索绪尔的研究中，它是通过对其所有内部社会变量的排除而建构起来的；或者按照乔姆斯基的观点，它是由赋予语法的形式属性以优先权——这种优先权损害了功能性限制——而建构起来的。
在这种学术研究成为流行时尚之前，我就已经开始了这方面的工作——即以确立“关于文化的一般理论”为目的，停留在对《普通语言学教程》的方法论的“解读”之上的研究(所幸它没有发表)。因此，对于这一具有至高权力的学科所施加的最为可见的支配性影响，我可能比别人更为敏感，无论它是涉及理论著述的文字手稿，还是按照表面意义对概念所作的机械转换，或者是所有不假思索的借用——这种借用割裂了完工的作品(opus operatum)与操作的方法(modus operandi)，导致了一种预料不到的、有时是荒谬的再解释——所作的机械转化。但是对时髦品味的反抗，绝不是一种注定要认可无知的拒绝：最初是索绪尔的著作，然后是——当我开始接近于察觉到作为执行的话语(和实践)模型的不足之处时——乔姆斯基的著作(他的著作认识到了生成性倾向的重要性)，在我看来就是包含一些基本问题的社会学。
这一点仍然是不可否认的，即除非我们超越作为纯理论的结构语言学意图之中所固有的限制，否则这些问题就无法发挥它们全部的影响。现代语言学的全部命运实际上是由索绪尔的初创行为(inaugural act)所决定的；通过这种初创行为，他把语言学的“外部”要素与内部要素区别开来，并且通过为后者保留语言学的头衔，排除了所有在语言与人类学之间确立一种关联的研究，排除了讲说它的人的政治历史，甚至是语言讲说区域的历史，因为所有这些事物不能对语言知识本身有所增益。尽管结构主义语言学被假定为源自语言被赋予的自治性(这种自治是相对于该种语言生产、再生产和使用的社会条件而言的)，但它如果不实施意识形态的影响，即将一种科学性的表象赋予给对历史产品的自然化，即赋予给象征性的对象，它就无法成为占支配地位的社会科学。语言学场域之外的音韵学模型的改变，对各种象征性产品、亲属关系分类体系、神话系统或者艺术作品而言，具有使其初创过程普遍化的效应，正是这种初创过程通过把语言方式与其生产和运用的社会条件分离开来而使得语言学成为了最自然的社会科学。
不言而喻，不同的社会科学对这匹特洛伊木马(Trojan Horse)也具有不同的先天容纳倾向。将人类学家与其对象联系起来的特定关系，以及由其外部观察者的地位所赋予的“公正的观众”的中立性，使人类学成为其首当其冲的牺牲品。当然，还有艺术或文学的历史传统：在这一领域，引进一种预设了功能的中性化的分析方法只能是使感知艺术作品的模式变得神圣化，而这种模式总是要求鉴赏家的、即“纯”的和纯粹的“内部”性情倾向，而排除任何对“外部”因素的“还原性”指涉。因此，颇像是另外一个理论分支的祈祷轮 (prayer wheel)，文艺符号学把对艺术著作的膜拜抬高到了理性的层次，而同时又没有改变它的功能。在各种情况中，社会都被排除在外——这使得语言或者任何其他象征物都被当作了其自身的终极目标——这颇有助于结构主义语言学的成功，因为它赋予以纯粹内部分析和规范分析为特征的“纯粹”实施以一种没有结局的游戏的魅力。
因此，推导出这一事实的所有结果就成为必要了；而这些则被语言学家和他们的模仿者强有力地压制了，以致如《普通语言学教程》所断言的， “语言的社会属性是其内部特征之一”，并且社会的异质性都包含在语言之中。必须要解决这一问题，同时还必须清醒地意识到这一事业当中所包含的风险，这种风险并非是显而易见的粗糙，因为对这种粗糙可以进行最为严格的分析；这种分析能促成被压抑之物的回升，但这也是它受到指责之处。简而言之，我们必须在接受一种较低的区分性(distinction)利润的同时，选择为真理付出较高的代价。


导言
第Ⅰ部分 语言交换的经济
1．合法语言的生产与再生产
2．价格形成与利润预期
第Ⅱ部分 言语与象征性权力
1．权威化的语言：使仪式性话语有效的社会条件
2．制度的仪式
3．认同与表征：对地区观念进行批判性反思所需要的元素
4．描述与规定：可能性的条件与政治效力的限制
第Ⅲ部分 对话语的分析
1．审查与塑形
2．宏大话语：“关于对《读<资本论>》的几个评注”的若干社会学思考
3．科学性的修辞：对关于孟德斯鸠效用的一种分析的论证
注释
译后记

Over the last three decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory and research of the post war era. Yet, despite the influence of his work, no single introduction to his wide-ranging "oeuvre" is available. This book, intended for an English-speaking audience, offers a systematic and accessible overview, providing interpretive keys to the internal logic of Bourdieu's work by explicating thematic and methodological principles underlying his work. The structure of Bourdieu's theory of knowledge, practice, and society is first dissected by Loï c Wacquant; he then collaborates with Bourdieu in a dialogue in which they discuss central concepts of Bourdieu's work, confront the main objections and criticisms his work has met, and outline Bourdieu's views of the relation of sociology to philosophy, economics, history, and politics. The final section captures Bourdieu in action in the seminar room as he addresses the topic of how to practice the craft of reflexive sociology. Throughout, they stress Bourdieu's emphasis on reflexivity--his inclusion of a theory of intellectual practice as an integral component of a theory of society--and on method--particularly his manner of posing problems that permits a transfer of knowledge from one area of inquiry into another. Amplified by notes and an extensive bibliography, this synthetic view is essential reading for both students and advanced scholars. Pierre Bourdieu is Professor of Sociology at the Collè ge de France. Loï c J. D. Wacquant is a Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University.

1730年代的巴黎，一群印刷业学徒发起了一场翻天覆地的屠猫仪式，他们折磨然后杀死所有他们能够找到的猫，包括他们师母的宠物猫。这种残酷的仪式何以在他们眼中如此“好笑”？十八世纪法国人的文化有珍奇的一面，也有寻常的一面，作者一一召唤而出，藉以邀请读者思索这一类的问题：为什么巴黎的一群工匠觉得猫大屠杀那幺有趣？玩笑如何在旧制度的工人间发酵？《猫大屠杀》揭露一个文化的万花筒视野，既熟悉又奇妙。作者在书中提供了治疗文化震荡所不可或缺而且入口难忘的一帖药剂。尽管这是一本学术著述，在作者以带有强烈文学趣味的随笔体例写作的策略下，读者绝对可以获得一次既有益又有趣的阅读经历。

In his first English-language special, comedian Gad Elmaleh gleefully digs into America's food obsessions, dating culture, slang, and more.