Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 09:41:20 +0100
From: "karl.maton" <karl.maton-AT-pop.ntlworld.com>
Subject: Re: Ynt: S.O.S: first advice is to not read or listen to the Americans 




kent strock wrote:

> Ozgur,
> I think you are absolutely on target in isolating the importance of the
> phenomenological component to Bourdieu's work and which might account for
> the micro/macro reductionism in his American reception.  Anglo-American
> sociology has been dominated by logical positivism, while phenomenology  and
> problem of language was and has been left out of social  science curriculum.
> kent

I think Kent is probably more accurate about American sociology here, though I
am not fully cognisant of whether that is so.  As for English sociology, that
has not been dominated by logical positivism for decades.  Since at least the
early 1970s sociology here has been dominated as much by variants of
phenomenology as anything else.  There tends to be a bipolar field.  Crudely,
here we tend to find phenomenological (in a broad sense) and empiricist
research on the one hand, and theoreticist, idealist social philosophy on the
other hand.   Both strands, though, do fail to deal with the problem of
language.

I wonder whether Bourdieu's fate in the US is a reflection of echo of
Durkheim's ... perhaps someone knows more here?

Take care,

Karl

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Karl Maton
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