Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) was considered the most influential intellectual in France during the 20th century. From “La Maison des sciences de l´homme (No. 54 of Boulevard Raspail, Paris), one of the great humanistic laboratories of old Europe, through all its extensive work., Strongly opposed the free market economy or the laws restricting immigration, and his views have always made headlines throughout France. ”
"We must restore politics, that is, action and thought," said this great French sociologist, considered the most influential thinker in France in the second half of the 20th century, since since 1955 he had clearly opted for the commitment to unite theory with practice. His extensive work and his participation in university classes and in important debates focused on renewing studies in sociology, at the same time that he dealt with art, literature, and social behavior, being in the last years of his life a critic fierce media and neoliberal policies.
Restore policy
In his last essay: "Against the policy of depoliticization", he argued that it is essential to restore politics, "that is, political action and thought and find a fair point of application that lies beyond the borders of the nation state, because their specific means can no longer be reduced to political and union struggles within the framework of the national states ”.
For Bourdieu, it was important to group without unifying, since he considered that social movements, beyond the various reasons that gave rise to them, set objectives for them, basically all have common features given that they generally come from the rejection of traditional forms of political mobilization.
This renowned and influential thinker could not conceive of a European social movement without the participation of a renewed unionism, which could overcome external and internal obstacles in favor of its strengthening and, fundamentally, its unification on a European scale, since - in his opinion- neoliberal policy contributes to the weakening of unions. And he maintained: “Only a strong European social movement of all the forces accumulated within the diverse organizations of the different countries and of the instruments of critical information elaborated in common, will be able to resist both the economic and intellectual forces of the big international companies. and its army of consultants, experts and jurists gathered in their councils in lobbying ”.
"Social space and field of power"
Pepe Rivas comments in his publication Ajoblanco (Spain) - that Bourdieu in his long career as an anthropologist, ethnologist and sociologist, contributed various instruments to advance the understanding of the hidden mechanisms that move our society, introducing the notion of sociology in vocabulary of "social space" and "field of power". These terms that Bourdieu explains: “The notion of social space solves the problem of the existence or not of social classes that divide sociologists from the beginning. Its existence can be denied without denying the essential, which are the social differences that exist in society due to the unequal distribution of goods and capital, which generates individual antagonisms and, sometimes, collective confrontations.
Social classes only exist in a virtual state and sociology must not build classes, but social spaces, first of all to break the tendency to think of the social world in a substantial way, which is that of common sense, and reason ”.
The notion "field of power" is related to a system of relationships. Bourdieu recalls that in the 19th century in France, there was a fight between artists and bourgeois, although these struggles were virtual. The theme was that many artists were children of the bourgeoisie in rupture with the bourgeoisie. He cites two examples: “Cézanne was the son of bankers; Manet, from a high official. In that fight what was at stake was domination over the social world and over the legitimate instruments of domination. ” There is always a hidden challenge in every field where we operate: “play or be out of the game” (Bourdieu).
Topics that keep current
We live in a century that has been characterized as that of “great chaos”, a century that is characterized by the “weakening of important values”, which deepens worrying “intellectual gaps”; a century where frivolity momentarily triumphs; where there are still sectors of world society that move between the extremes of perplexity.
Regarding the disorder that reigns in our time, the French philosopher Michel Conche affirms that the current absolute disorder requires seeing the world, at least from the philosophical point of view, without unity or meaning, and less of true order; even as if it were not a world, but rather as a crazy set.
From the empire of order to the empire of chance. The question is worth: who will be the new Descartes that with the thread of a new rationality reconstructs the meaning of the world?
Bourdieu's contribution to sociology is above all a “new way of seeing the social world, granting an important function to symbolic structures: education, culture, literature, art” (Louis Pinto); that reaches the media and politics, areas in which the French thinker concentrated his research towards the end of his life.
In the field of communication, Bourdieu - former professor at the Collage de France, was controversial when his book "On television" appeared. In his opinion, television as it is currently presented, contributes to the weakening of culture. It is enough to see in Uruguay the "import" of some television programs from Argentina, Mexico and even the United States. (¡)
"This fearsome alliance (written and television press) makes the specific values of art for art's sake to frame it more and more threatened." -express. In the critical analysis, he considers, in turn, that the media are in very few hands and asks himself, in a process of concentration, but where to?
A situation that has led to true journalism having died, because instead of looking for reality, seriously analyzing it, it sees it through the communication offices, political parties, institutions or commercial brands. It is that the media -in general- no longer live on the sale of copies, but subsist on advertising, which is why the profile of yesterday's journalism has been disfigured.
Carlos Mígueles, from Spain, agrees with Bourdieu's position when expressing: The media are becoming transmission belts for the image and communication offices of political parties, large business groups and “thin tanks "Who intend to influence national and foreign policy." (in La Onda digital Nº 383).
The great teachers in critical formative opinion, in many countries "are on vacation."
