On the occasion of the exhibition of Pierre Bourdieu’s Algerian photographs at the Centre Pompidou Museum in Paris, from October 2024 to March 2025, the Pierre Bourdieu Foundation is launching an international newsletter published twice a year. The Foundation was created for coordinating international research projects and managing the collection of Bourdieu’s Algerian photographs.
The principal aim of the newsletter is to inform a global readership about publications, conferences, workshops and discussions, which in a variety of ways build on Bourdieu’s sociology and put it to work in novel domains. The sheer impossibility of keeping up with activities in a plurality of research areas in ever more countries makes it relevant to bring at least some of this information together. By doing so, we hope to counter intellectual fragmentation, stimulate interdisciplinary exchanges and foster collaboration across geographic boundaries, and thus contribute to better informed, and more reflexive research and teaching practices.
Rather than promoting theoretical exegesis or erudite commentary, the newsletter will report, very broadly, on research putting Bourdieu’s theories to work across the social and human sciences. It is committed to avoiding hero-worship and interpretative disputes disconnected from empirical inquiry.
Although the contents and style of Practical Sense are a collective effort in progress, we intend to publish short, hitherto untranslated texts as well as archival pieces by Bourdieu himself (in collaboration with the Bourdieu Archives), call attention to lesser known aspects of his oeuvre, report about ongoing research in different areas, and, explore questions of international circulation, transnational comparisons, and the formation and functioning of global fields.
In addition, Practical Sense will publish short articles and a range of more vivid and accessible papers: interviews, critical reflections, conference reports, bibliographical and other information. In the highly bureaucratized research environments of today, with its scientific hierarchies and layers of power relations, we will use the editorial and stylistic flexibility of a newsletter to stimulate undervalued genres of publishing, raise critical questions about the state of social science research, and contribute to its advancement and flowering. We welcome contributions from around the world to fill these various rubrics (they should be sent to the editors at newsletter@fondationbourdieu.net).
The newsletter is published in English, as it is the most widely used language in international scholarly communication, but at a later stage other language editions may be considered. Contributions written in languages other than English, can be published on the newsletter’s website in their original language (see https://practicalsense.net).
Each issue of Practical Sense will have a thematic section and an open section. The thematic part of the first issue takes up Bourdieu’s Algerian studies, including his photographs, as a starting point for a better understanding of how this lesser-known part of his work came about, its position and implications in contemporary debates about postcolonialism and the efforts at decolonizing the canon and the curriculum. It also discusses recent publications about Bourdieu’s early work and their intellectual and material conditions.
The next two issues will appear in 2025. Among the topics we’re considering for the thematic part are questions of transnationalism, reflexivity (arguably the single most important feature of Bourdieu’s sociological practice), and, leveraging the 50 year’s anniversary of the journal Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (founded by Bourdieu in 1975), scholarly publishing, past and present.
The open part of the newsletter is flexible, but it will contain regular rubrics (reports about workshops and conferences, short book reviews, bibliographical information, etc.).
In the coming years, Practical Sense will be edited by a small international group of younger scholars, supervised by a scientific board. Editorship is temporary and will rotate regularly. In addition to the editors and board members, we will try to build up a more permanent network of correspondents, who can inform the editors about significant debates, events, and publications in their country or region of origin.
To subscribe to Practical Sense, simply enter your email address here: https://practicalsense.net. The sale of Bourdieu’s photographs to the fund of the Pompidou Museum will make possible the functioning of the newsletter during its first few years. Its continuation, however, will depend on the reception and the interest it generates, as well as on donations, subsidies or institutional support. We are very grateful for all suggestions about the content and organization of Practical Sense as well as for suggestions regarding material support (please write to newsletter@fondationbourdieu.net).
The editorial team