Page 159 - Cultural Theory

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••• Derek Robbins •••

investigation to Algeria for a definite reason. Algeria is specifically the object of
this study because the clash between the indigenous and the European civiliza-
tions has made itself felt here with the greatest force.
(Bourdieu, 1958: 5; Bourdieu, 1962: xi)

Bourdieu was insisting, in other words, that the motor for his analysis was not a
desire to understand a pre-given cultural identity but, rather, a desire to understand
the cultural processes whereby that phenomenal entity constituted itself. The notion
of Algeria as a cultural unit was an uneasy artifice, a mirage situated somewhere in
the middle between the constructivism of indigenous people and the conceptualiza-
tion of observers.

From Acculturation Analysis to Sociology of Education
and on to the Sociology of Social Action

In spite of his historical training, Herskovits was still locked within a frame of think-
ing that required him to try to find scientific explanations of acculturation phenom-
ena. Hence it was important for him to isolate acculturation from assimilation and
diffusion from tradition in order to establish a discrete category of phenomenon that
could be called acculturation and could be scrutinized as such. By contrast, Bourdieu
brought his phenomenological orientation to bear on the same set of problems. This
meant that he was not interested in analysing the process of adaptation between cul-
tures in abstract but, instead, in analysing the readjustments of values of people who
were forcibly moved from one cultural situation to another. Bourdieu was interested
both in the ways in which traditional values were sustained intergenerationally
within Algerian tribes and in the ways in which individuals adjusted those values
when they encountered new situations.
The English translation of Sociologie de l’Algérie – The Algerians – appeared in 1962
with a Preface by Raymond Aron. An established sociologist, Aron was Bourdieu’s
mentor for the first few years of the 1960s but, in those same years, he attended the
seminars of Lévi-Strauss and it is evident from the second edition of Sociologie de
l’Algérie (1961) that Bourdieu had made presentational changes which were seeking
to secure his credentials as an anthropologist. Meanwhile, Travail et travailleurs en
Algérie (1963) and Le déracinement, la crise de l’agriculture traditionnelle en Algérie (1964)
were the slightly delayed publication of sociological research carried out in 1960–61
immediately before Algeria’s achievement of independence. Bourdieu intended that
his publications should contribute to political debate about the condition of Algeria
and its future. Some of Bourdieu’s earliest articles were published in Les Temps
Modernes which is indicative of his inclination to offer reports of his researches which
would be politically engaged rather than contributions to academic discourses. Even
though Aron was a political sociologist, there was no sense in which Bourdieu was
seeking to communicate his findings in the field of political science. Back in France

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