Garcia Jr., A., Garcia-Parpet, M., Pérez, A., Poupeau, F. and Rocha, M. (eds.) (2023) Bourdieu et les Amériques. Une internationale scientifique : genèse, pratiques et programmes de recherche. Aubervilliers : Éditions de l’IHEAL.
Carolina Pulici
The study day held at the Institut des Hautes Études de l’Amérique Latine in 2019 resulted in a collective work that brings together seventeen varied contributions (research articles, testimonials, interviews) to explore the transatlantic circulation of Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas and his exchanges with researchers across the American continent. It aims to shed light on the social, intellectual, and political conditions that facilitated these cooperations by examining the roles played by mediators, universities, funding agencies, and publishing houses on both sides of the Atlantic.
The book shows, among other things, the diverse ways in which Bourdieu’s work was integrated into the social sciences across different American countries. For example, while Brazil’s reception of Bourdieu anticipated his international recognition, La Distinction (1979) was not published there until 2007, even though the global impact of this book would eventually unify the reception of his work on the continent, which had previously been fragmented across fields such as anthropology, education, and culture. In Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, Le métier de sociologue (1968) was the key reference during the 1970s and 1980s, as its epistemological contributions became vital in Chile after the dictatorial period (1973-1990). In Bolivia, in contrast, Bourdieu’s political interventions in the 1990s attracted more attention, with the political rather than scientific impact
being predominant throughout the Andes. Interestingly, in Argentina, he was considered “too Weberian” and “not Marxist enough,” whereas in the USA and Canada, he was often presented as a “neo-Marxist.”
The chapters also highlight the unequal influence of Bourdieu’s work across North and South America. In Brazil, the discovery of his work in the 1970s and 1980s significantly reoriented research directions, albeit initially within peripheral universities. In contrast, there was no comparable “Bourdieusian turn” in English-speaking Canada, where his work remained only marginally referenced in scientific articles even by the mid-2000s.
Asymmetries between the various countries participating in this “scientific international” are another focal point of the book. The dominant position of the United States as a “scientific fortress to be conquered” is evidenced by Bourdieu’s visits there and the publication of nine American authors (out of 59) in the Le sens commun collection. In contrast, despite his extensive and warm exchanges with Argentina and Brazil, Bourdieu never visited these countries and invited only one South American
scholar — Argentine linguist Luis Jorge Prieto — to publish in the prestigious collection he directed at Éditions de Minuit.
Some contributors argue that Bourdieu was more focused on exporting his work rather than fostering a dynamic of shared knowledge production. However, others assert that mediators on the American continent benefited from this import, which became a subject of contention within the field of national social sciences, with the transfer of symbolic capital from Bourdieu, who was increasingly devoted to the international stage, to those who translated, selected and presented his work.
The study of the transnational networks forged by Bourdieu and the researchers at the Centre de Sociologie Européenne is also rich in debate on the conditions necessary for the generalization of sociological issues and the universalization of research programs. Thus, Bourdieu et les Amériques goes beyond analyzing the formation of a “scientific international” around Bourdieu and his team; it also provokes broader reflections on the internationalization of the social sciences and, by the same token, the social conditions underpinning the circulation of scientific ideas in the contemporary era.