[In the following review, Ghasarian summarizes the issues explored by Bourdieu in Sociology in Question, lauding the work for explaining some significant ideas regarding social theory.]

Social scientists must know the conditions of their productions. They must keep in mind that the relationship between subject and object is socially determined. Intellectuals' responsibility toward the social world sustains Pierre Bourdieu's reflection in this book [Sociology in Question]. Through a series of lectures and interviews addressed to non-specialists, he explores the relation between sociology (as he sees it) and other disciplines. The issues developed include the sociology of culture and taste (music, sport, haute couture, art), as well as the role of language in society and social sciences. In twenty-one short chapters, at the end of each of which he gives a list of his related writing on the themes addressed, Bourdieu offers an easy introduction to some ideas and writing that have made a profound impact on general social theory.

Bourdieu sees the distinction between ethnology and sociology as a pure product of colonial history that has no logical justification. He insists on the fact that his own work would not have been possible if he had not tried to hold together some problematics traditionally regarded as ethnological or sociological. The sociology he proposes is a science critical of itself, of the other sciences, and of the power of science. The purpose of that science is to understand the laws governing the production of science. As a law that is unknown is taken for granted (as nature is), a better knowledge of the laws of the social world (through social science) can give more freedom. Bourdieu insists on the fact that if the dominant groups have an interest in the maintenance of the law, the dominated ones have an interest in the discovery of the law as such, a law that is historical and could be abolished if the conditions of its functioning were removed. He estimates that by revealing things that are hidden and sometimes repressed (like the correlation between educational achievement and social origin), sociology inevitably raises problems. According to him, if sociology should be useful for something, it is in providing a better understanding of the social world, notably of the structures of power. In his terms: “sociology would not be worth an hour of anyone's time if it were to be merely an expert knowledge for experts.” Sociology should not give “lessons” but “weapons.”

Bourdieu endeavors to show that what is called the “social” is a hidden “history.” The class sense, for instance, is hidden in people's heads, speech, and body postures. Continuously referring to the historical process to develop his analyses, Bourdieu addresses (explicitly or implicitly) the habitus that he defines as a product of all biographical and class experiences. That habitus, or distinctive capital, is a system of dispositions incorporated in bodies, the relationship to the body (the way people talk, laugh, or eat, for example) being the basis of a set of attitudes and values. The habitus appears clearly in artistic production. Indeed, the producer's production is governed by the position he/she occupies in the space of production. What makes the value of the work is not the rarity of the product but the collective belief in the value of the producer and his/her product. There is thus an unavoidable correspondence between social positions and tastes. The idea of personal opinion itself is socially determined: it is a product of history, reproduced by education. Cultural capital secures direct profits on the educational market but it also secures profits of distinction which result automatically from the fact that it is unequally distributed.

Bourdieu reminds intellectuals that they are not free of habitus. The type of social science they do depends on the position they occupy within the social world. Signs of recognition and gratifications expose them to all sorts of subtle constraints and censorship. This is why the sociology of intellectuals is a preliminary step of all social sciences. Intellectuals have the privilege of being placed in conditions that enable them to understand their specific conditions. If they do so, they can offer others the means of liberation from determinism. Intellectuals must denounce what Bourdieu in his last chapter calls the racism of intelligence; this racism is nothing else than the means through which the members of the dominant class aim to produce a justification of the social order that they dominate. Through education classification, this social discrimination is legitimized and given the sanction of science. Intellectuals must notably ask themselves what is their contribution to “IQ racism.”

The realization that science is an instrument for legitimizing power must not lead to a romantic and regressive anti-scientism. Bourdieu believes in science on the condition that the weapons of intellectual power are turned against intellectual power. According to him, the science of man will only progress if it makes explicit that the theories researchers always bring in are generally no more than the transfigured projection of their relation to the social world. To be scientifically intelligent implies to place oneself in a situation that generates real problems and real difficulties. Bourdieu's whole effort is aimed at destroying mental and verbal automatisms, among which are those of sociological language (that is not “neutral”). Like his other writings, this book shakes the theoretical field of social science at its core. It invites the reader to explore a risky but fundamentally humanistic and optimistic sociology.