No judgement of taste is innocent - we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu's "Distinction" brilliantly illuminates the social pretentions of the middle classes in the modern world, focusing on the tastes and preferences of the French bourgeoisie. First published in 1979, the book is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind. In the course of everyday life, we constantly choose between what we find aesthetically pleasing, and what we consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Taste is not pure. Bourdieu demonstrates that our different aesthetic choices are all distinctions - that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. This fascinating work argues that the social world functions simultaneously as a system of power relations and as a symbolic system in which minute distinctions of taste become the basis for social judgement.

《世界的苦难》是布尔迪厄晚年与其他22位合作者以细腻的情感和认真的观察及倾听，耗时三年访谈数百人所写就的田野调查著作。通过一个个以访谈形式出现的鲜活的生活史个案，展示了当代法国社会普通人日常生活中的种种困难与痛苦，并透过社会学的解释，揭示出痛苦背后深刻的社会和政治根源 ，以及人与社会的复杂关系。本书是布尔迪厄将学者责任与公民使命融为一体，集中探讨弱势群体艰难处境的最著名成果。在看似平淡的个人生活史的叙述中蕴含着震撼人心的苦难真相。