{"id":2065,"date":"2025-11-26T09:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T08:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/practicalsense.net\/?page_id=2065"},"modified":"2025-12-01T12:43:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T11:43:23","slug":"podcast-on-pierre-bourdieu-no-3","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/practicalsense.net\/index.php\/podcast-on-pierre-bourdieu-no-3\/","title":{"rendered":"A Podcast on Pierre Bourdieu\u2019s Life and Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Bildningspodden Podcast, September 24, 2025<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/div>

Raoul Galli and Mikael Palme<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

On September 24, 2025, an hour-long episode entitled Pierre Bourdieu<\/a><\/em> was published in the Swedish-language podcast Bildningspodden<\/em><\/a>, connected to the Bildung<\/em> magazine Anekdot<\/em><\/a> produced at the Faculty of Humanities at Stockholm University<\/a> and funded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities<\/a> and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond<\/a>.<\/span>
The main idea of the podcast episode being to introduce the academically interested public to Bourdieu, the invited guests were asked to imagine an average listener comparable to the folk high school teacher<\/em><\/a>. The conversation covered a range of areas related to Bourdieu’s life and work, as well as some professional and personal experiences of the two guests, relevant to understanding their initial and long-standing interest in Pierre Bourdieu’s multifaceted contribution to the social sciences. <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Ruhi Tyson<\/span><\/strong>, the host, started off: Hello and welcome to Bildningspodden, which today will focus on the French sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu.<\/em><\/span>
Pierre Bourdieu is one of the true giants of 20th-century sociology. He was a researcher and philosopher whose ideas had an enormous impact on both the social sciences and the humanities, but also on public debate in general. So, if you have read the culture pages or listened to a discussion about economics, it is not unlikely that you have heard his name and concepts such as cultural capital or habitus. <\/span>My name is Rui Tyson, and with me are Raoul Galli<\/a>, PhD in social anthropology from Stockholm University, and Mikael Palme<\/a>, associate professor in sociology of education at Uppsala University. With Donald Broady, Mikael played an important role in the introduction of Bourdieu’s work in Sweden in the 1980\u2019s, not least through the publication of translated original texts in the anthology Kultursociologiska texter<\/a> (1991\/1986).<\/span><\/em>
Welcome both of you to Bildningspodden! Could you start by saying a few words about what it was about Bourdieu that caught your interest back then?<\/span><\/em><\/p>

Raoul Galli<\/strong><\/span>: Yes, for me it started before I came to the university. For some reason, I came across a book by journalist Annette Kullenberg, who had written several books on the Swedish upper class<\/a>, which became of interest to me based on both my social origin and trajectory. I had experienced a klassresa (a common Swedish term for social mobility), both upwards and downwards, through my family, and I had developed a somewhat dual cultural perspective on things as a descendant of Italian immigrants in Sweden. These experiences, I think, contributed to the attraction of the work on \u201cthe French elite\u201d by a certain \u201cPierre Bourdieu,\u201d whom Anette [Kullenberg] wrote about. Thinking about it, I recall that Mikael was also interviewed in the same book. If I remember correctly, it was called <\/em>Urp! sa \u00f6verklassen (1995) and was the sequel to Kullenberg\u2019s first book about the Swedish aristocracy and upper class, which was written in the 1970\u2019s. So that was my first encounter and what sparked my interest. Then I began studying sociology and anthropology, where we read a little Bourdieu. That was my introduction.<\/em><\/span><\/p>

Mikael Palme<\/strong><\/span>: In a way, it was a coincidence, because I had studied philosophy, both practical and theoretical, in Uppsala and was going to do a PhD in literary studies. It was a difficult time because I never really got around to doing anything that really interested me. Then I came across the book <\/em>Esquisse d\u2019une th\u00e9orie de la pratique, the first of three mainly theoretical works that Bourdieu wrote as he developed his sociological conceptual world. The second was Le Sens pratique, and the third<\/em> M\u00e9ditations pascaliennes. In them, he addresses similar fundamental questions, and the texts are partly similar, with his social field concept being maturely explored in the last one<\/em>. Esquisse was a kind of revelation for me, even though I only understood a fraction of it, and it prompted me to apply for a scholarship to study in Paris in 1977. At that point, I actually had contact with Bourdieu, because I wrote a seven-page confession about my situation. Then, one line came back: \u201cYou are welcome as an auditeur libre,\u201d that is, as a non-regular student. At that time, I was more familiar with Marxist and similar traditions, where external factors, ultimately the movement of capital, accounted for social structure and also for the acting human being. I met with a sociology that brought in real people and their history, experiences, assets, and, also, their<\/em> tastes.<\/span>
The conversation then continued in a rather intense and winding manner, which the editorial team nevertheless managed to edit into a structure that works for the listener. Thematically, it can be divided into the following blocks, even though connections between them were repeatedly made:<\/span><\/p>