Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 10:48:23 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Emrah Goker <egoker-AT-Bilkent.EDU.TR>
Subject: Bourdieu in Contemporary Politics



Hello to everyone!

In fact that is not an informative mail, I was just wondering, as I know
no French, what the recent position of Bourdieu among his colleagues,
and among the political community opposing the current French
administration, is. I read, in an  article on him, that he is not that
active in the political arena --except, of course, his monstrous academic
criticisms of education, intellectuals, etc--... 

In my country's (Turkey) academis circles, dominated both by crude
"Establishment" positivism and by Baudrillardian nonsensical
postmodernism, Bourdieu is not known much. One of those academics --a
sociologist lecturer-- who read him but disliked him had once told us
Bourdieu was one of the proponents of welfare services: He,our lecturer
had said, was defending the right of those poor people to enter any
expensive restaurant and demand to be served without paying, as the State
had to look after their basic needs. That lecturer was an elitist, so was
quite disgusted by the idea of "dirty" folk invading "highbrow" premises!    

Best wishes,
Emrah Goker

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