A Classic Sociologist for Our Time: Pierre Bourdieu's General Theory

This paper draws attention to one possible intellectual factor that has contributed to Pierre Bourdieu's undeniable status as a contemporary classic.Despite his frequent sorties against general theorising, Bourdieu has produced his own kind of general sociological theory that, in a crowd of competitors, is better suited than most to meeting the demand that is present across the field of sociology and other social sciences for a general but non-universalist theory.It is possible to distinguish four relevant properties of theories, which are correlated but mutually irreducible one to the other: conceptual generality, generality of application (universality), substantive scope (domain), and abstractness.I argue that, with respect to the four, Bourdieu's theory is best characterised as exceptionally strong on conceptual generality and substantive scope, but limited in terms of its universality.Bourdieu's central methodological device, theoretical induction, produces knowledge that is both domain-specific and indefinitely extendable to new empirical domains, thereby providing the basis for an ever-expanding scope.An analytical review of Bourdieu's published work (books) shows its vast substantive scope, by virtue of which it is a theory of the social world in its totality.Bourdieu's theory occupies a place in the ill-defined middle ground between grand theory and empiricism and in some respects resembles a middle-range theory.But Bourdieu's anti-positivist constructivism is resistant to the empiricist fragmentation and loss of theoretical momentum that afflicts middle-range theories.I conclude here that the extraordinary success of Bourdieu's sociology can be partly explained by its ability to satisfy the demand for a general theory in the post-1960s intellectual climate that is inimical to universalist claims by offering its own brand of theory that avoids the typical shortcomings of both abstract grand theorising and limiteduse middle-range theories.