The Translations of Pierre Bourdieu’s Books on Algeria

Matthias Fringant and Jéssica Ronconi

As the literature on the transnational circulation of ideas suggests (Bourdieu, 2002; Casanova, 1999; Sapiro, Leperlier, and Brahimi, 2018; Vauchez, 2013), a text’s ability to cross national boundaries and reach other intellectual fields depends on many factors. A key factor is its capacity to be translated, which in turn is conditioned by the nature of the text, the linguistic and cultural power of its original language, and the history and position of its discipline within both the original and receiving fields, to name a few elements. This text examines the translations of Pierre Bourdieu’s books on Algeria and aims to analyze their international reach.
Pierre Bourdieu began his first sociological works on Algerian society during his stay in the country from 1956 to 1961.
Though this body of studies was used throughout the sociologist’s career, it specifically led to four distinct books dedicated to Algeria. [1] Sociologie de l’Algérie, a study on the history and social composition of Algeria, was first published in 1958. Travail et travailleurs en Algérie, a collective book published in 1963, is based on statistical material examining the effects of the introduction of capitalism on economic and temporal practices. Le Déracinement, co-written with Abdelmalek Sayad and published in 1964, furthers develops the previous line of reasoning by empirically analyzing the effects of the displacement of rural populations during the war. Lastly, Algérie 60, published in 1977, is quite different from the rest of this body of work as it is a version of Travail et travailleurs en Algérie stripped of both its empirical and methodological material.
This text aims to describe the existing translations of these books, originally written in French, into other languages, analyzing this process as a particular case study of the transnational circulation of ideas.

The Translations of Pierre Bourdieu’s Books on Algeria
Table 1 provides an overview of the translations of Pierre Bourdieu’s books on Algeria.

Publications in French (original and new editions)	Translations (in chronological order)
Bourdieu, P. (1958) Sociologie de l’Algérie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, “Que sais-je ?” New editions in 1961, 1963, 1970, 8th edition in 2008, “Quadrige” in 2010.	English: Bourdieu, P. (1962) The Algerians, Boston: Beacon Press (translator Alan Ross, preface by Raymond Aron) Spanish (Spain): Bourdieu, P. (2006) Sociología de Argelia y Tres estudios de etnología cabilia, Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Boletin Oficial del Estado (translator Dolores Beltrán deFelipe)
Bourdieu, P., Darbel, A., Rivet, J.-P., Seibel C. (1963) Travail et travailleurs en Algérie, Paris-La Haye: Mouton Abbreviated edition in 1977; new edition in 2021.
Bourdieu, P., Sayad, A. (1964) Le Déracinement. La crise de l’agriculture traditionnelle en Algérie, Paris: Minuit, “Grands documents” New edition in 1996.	Spanish (Spain): Bourdieu, P., Sayad A. (1965) Argelia entra en la historia, Barcelona: Editorial Nova Terra (translator Ángel Abad) Spanish (Argentina): Bourdieu, P., Sayad A. (2017) El Desarraigo. La violencia del capitalismo en une sociedad rural, Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editore (translator Angel Abad) English: Bourdieu, P., Sayad, A. (2020) Uprooting: The Crisis of Traditional Agriculture in Algeria, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press (translator Susan Emanuel)
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Algérie 60. Structures économiques et structures temporelles, Paris: Minuit, “Grands documents”	English: Bourdieu, P. (1979) Algeria 1960 : The disenchantment of the world, The sense of honour, The Kabyle house or the world reversed, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (translator Richard Nice) Portuguese (Brazil): Bourdieu, P. (1979) O Desencantamento do Mundo. Estruturas Econômicas e Estruturas Temporais, São Paulo: Perspectiva (translator Silvia Mazza). New edition in 2021. Japanese: Bourdieu, P. (1993), Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten (translator Tetsu Harayama) Korean: Bourdieu, P. (1995), Seoul: Dongmoosun Publishing Co (translator Jong Chul-Choi) German: Bourdieu, P. (2000) Die zwei Gesichter der Arbeit. Interdependenzen von Zeit — und Wirtschaftsstrukturen am Beispiel einer Ethnologie der algerischen Übergangsgesellschaft, Konstanz: UVK (translator Franz Schultheis) Spanish (Spain): Bourdieu, P. (2006) Algeria 60. Estructuras economicas y estructuras temporales, Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores (translator Ariel Dilon)

Pierre Bourdieu’s books on Algeria, written in the late 1950s and early 1960s, were rarely translated after their original publication. Only Sociologie de l’Algérie was translated into English in 1962, and Le Déracinement into Spanish in 1965. In contrast, Algérie 60, was translated into English and Portuguese just two years after its first publication in 1977. In the 1990s, this book experienced a new phase of circulation as it was translated into Japanese and Korean, and later into German and Spanish, making it the most widely translated of Bourdieu’s books on Algeria. Recently, Bourdieu’s empirical works have entered another phase of translation, with Sociologie de l’Algérie being translated into Spanish in 2006 and Le Déracinement into English and Italian
in 2020 and 2022, respectively.

A Theoretical and Globally Selective Translation Process
The short description of these translations lends itself to several interpretations that align with findings from other studies on the transnational circulation of ideas, particularly on Bourdieu’s work (Sapiro and Bustamante, 2009). The circulation of this body of work primarily occurred through Algérie 60, which is the most abstract of Bourdieu’s works on Algeria. This book, stripped of its empirical and methodological material from Travail and Travailleurs en Algérie — never translated to a foreign language to date — underscores a key trend: the likelihood of a text’s international circulation is closely linked to its content. Theoretical works tend to circulate more readily because their translation can more easily transcend the boundaries of their original object, language, and disciplinary context. In contrast, empirical studies, which require an understanding of local and regional contexts, face greater challenges in translation and dissemination (Casanova, 1999, p. 64; Sapiro, Leperlier and Brahimi, 2018, pp. 10-11).
When examining the most widely translated of Bourdieu’s books on Algeria, Algérie 60. Structures économiques et structures temporelles, an interesting pattern emerges in title and subtitle adaptations. The original title includes an empirical reference to Algeria and an abstract subtitle, “Economic structures and temporal structures.” The Spanish translation preserves the original formulation, whereas the English version maintains the empirical aspect of the title but adds “Kabyle house” to the subtitle, reinforcing the field of work, likely due to American empirical traditions in social sciences (Merkel, 2022; Pollak, 1975). The Brazilian translation takes a different approach by omitting the reference to Algeria and adopting the theoretical title “Disenchantment of the World,” while keeping the abstract subtitle. The German version minimizes the empirical element in the title but incorporates it into the subtitle, referring to the “Ethnology of the Algerian Transitional Society.” One can observe that these variations in translation are closely related to the disciplinary fields of sociology and social sciences in the respective countries of reception.
The choice to emphasize the empirical or theoretical aspects of Bourdieu’s work is also evident in the covers of his first book on Algeria, both the original and the English versions, as illustrated in Figures 1 and 2: