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••• Framing Bourdieu •••

just as, in using the quotation from Outline of a Theory of Practice, Garnham made no
specific reference to the fact that Bourdieu was clearly stating that the denial of eco-
nomic interest takes different forms in different social circumstances. In short, the
early response to Bourdieu’s La distinction indicates that there was an attempt to
ignore Bourdieu’s rejection of Marxist, materialist economism. The attempt to appro-
priate Bourdieu’s work was an attempt precisely to accommodate him to the
economism which he was at pains to avoid.

Conclusion

Space does not allow for a detailed examination of the progress of Cultural Studies in
the period from 1980 to the present. I would simply suggest that as the Marxist influ-
ence declined, so the assumptions about the autonomy of culture revived. It became
explicable, therefore, that Bourdieu should regard the existence of ‘Cultural Studies’
and ‘cultural theory’ as manifestations of exactly the kinds of ideologically motivated and
‘aristocratic’ rejections of the social sphere that he had sought to expose in analysing
the variations of taste in La distinction. Bourdieu did not seek to articulate any cul-
tural theory. He sought to subject the totality of cultural phenomena to sociological
analysis. A natural extension in the 1990s of the ways in which Bourdieu earlier had
jointly undertaken sociological analyses of knowledge and education and art, pho-
tography, and taste would have been for him to analyse sociologically the phenom-
enon of Cultural Studies as a subject within Higher Education institutions. This is a
task, after his death, still to be undertaken. We still need vigilantly to analyse socio-
logically the processes of social distinction which are underwritten by the concepts
of culture presupposed by Cultural Studies and their associated theories.

References

Bourdieu, P. (1958) Sociologie de l’Algérie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Bourdieu, P. (1962) The Algerians. Boston: Beacon Press.
Bourdieu, P., Darbel, A, Rivet, J.-P, and Seibel, C. (1963) Travail et travailleurs en Algérie, Paris-La
Haye, Mouton.
Bourdieu, P., and Sayad, A. (1964) Le déracinement, la crise de l’agriculture traditionnelle en Álgérie,
Paris, Ed. de Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.-C. (1964) Les héritiers. Paris: Editions de Minuit.
Bourdieu, P., Boltanski, L., Castel, R., and Chamboredon, J.-C. (1965) Un art moyen. Paris:
Editions de Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. (1966) ‘Champ intellectuel et projet créateur’, Les Temps Modernes, 246. Translated
as Bourdieu, 1971b.
Bourdieu, P., Darbel, A. and Schnapper, D. (1966a) L’amour de l’art. Paris: Editions de Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. and Reynaud, J.D. (1966b) ‘Une sociologie de l’action, est-elle possible)’, Revue
française de sociologie, VII, 4.
Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.-C. (1967) ‘Sociology and philosophy in France since 1945’, Social
Research, XXXIV, 1.

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