[In the following essay, Marlière outlines Bourdieu's thoughts on the media as presented in Sur la télévision.]

Pierre Bourdieu's “theory of practice” has combined an impressive range of empirical topics and theoretical reflections, through the publication of a vast series of research projects from the late 1950s onwards. Among his numerous objects of study, the French sociologist has dealt with kinship, education, philosophy, economics, language, literature, museums, photography, political representation, law, religion, science and poverty. Bourdieu's evident eclecticism must not be confused with a kind of academic dilettantism, however. On the contrary, the heterogeneity of his fieldwork has always been sustained by a homogeneous theoretical corpus. Moreover, Bourdieu's somewhat dry style sometimes proves to be daunting to the neophyte who is not equipped with the minimal background needed fully to penetrate his discourse. Since his first theoretical publications, Bourdieu has insisted that sociology's first task is to observe society scientifically, and to break away from everyday wisdom or the “sociology of immediateness” to be heard at dinner-party conversations, in the media or in the political class. This epistemological stance has led him to publish a series of highly specialized works which are not reader-friendly for a non-specialist audience.

As a French intellectual increasingly involved in the socio-political debates of his time, Bourdieu has noticeably taken this problem into account over the past fifteen years. A few attempts to make his thought more accessible have been published (Sociology in Question, In Other Words, 1990; and An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 1992) and his two most recent books have clearly been directed towards a wider readership than the sociology milieu. In 1993, La Misère du monde, a weighty publication devoted to the study of the different forms of poverty and social suffering in France, became a bestseller in French social science. Bourdieu's most recent publication, Sur la Télévision, has already provoked debate. This thin book is the transcript of two lectures on the media which Bourdieu presented recently at the Collège de France. Ironically, in view of his stance, the two conferences were filmed by the French channel Paris Première and televised in May 1996. The general tone is openly polemical, even if the author stresses that the book should not be taken as an attack on journalists and television, but as a debate engaging with all those who wish to see television not as an instrument of “symbolic oppression” but as a tool of “direct democracy”. His theory is that the media “jeopardize political life and democracy”. Bourdieu's main argument is that the “journalistic field” is more and more subject to the domination and interests of the market. Driven by the profit motive, the media have been “contaminating” in turn other sectors of cultural production, primarily the “intellectual field”. Obsessed with ratings, the television industry has replaced difficult programmes, such as politics or “intellectual encounters”, with entertainment which is supposedly acceptable to all, such as sports and soap operas.

Bourdieu insists on the general incompetence and cynicism of television journalists, and is dismayed by the absolutist role played by ratings and their undemocratic use by channel managers. He points out that they are wrongly identified with popular consensus and consequently with the accountability of the institution, and is annoyed to see polls being equated with universal suffrage. The hegemony of television over the traditional media, the press, is quite recent, and has had negative consequences for the field of academic research and intellectual production. He attacks “complacent” intellectuals and the new class of French thinkers and writers who assiduously court the medium. These “collaborators” use television as a way of bypassing the traditional channels and processes of intellectual legitimization, and try to appropriate the intellectual legitimacy they have failed to obtain or do not have the patience to seek in the academic arena. In other words, Bourdieu argues that the academic imprimatur once exclusively awarded through the old mechanisms such as publication and teaching performance has now been supplemented by television appearances. He believes that this move to the market endangers the autonomy of science that is vital for academic research. The latter would be threatened by the former inasmuch as “peer acknowledgement” would, in some cases, be replaced by “media acknowledgement”. Bourdieu shows that even areas considered the best preserved from the media, such as the judiciary or scientific subjects like mathematics or physics; are also affected by the “media fast-thinking” effect.

An Anglo-American readership will probably object that Bourdieu's rather apocalyptic depiction of the relationship between academe and television above all epitomizes a Franco-French debate. For it seems that even the most media-friendly intellectuals in America and Britain are often called on television to deliver clinical and highly specialized expositions of matters which fall directly into their field of competence. By contrast, in most cases, French intellectuals are happy to pronounce in debates far beyond their immediate academic concerns. This became apparent during the long-lasting strikes of 1995 in the public sector and, more recently, in the fight against the Debré law on immigration. Here Sur la Télévision merely puts forward situations of symbolic struggle between intellectuals in a particular national context. Furthermore, Bourdieu seems at certain times to over-emphasize the impact of the “media blessing”. As a consequence, he seems to fear that the soundbites of what he calls the “intellectuals of parody”—Bernard-Herni Lévy, Philippe Sollers and their like—may serve to undermine the authority of proper academic research. Bourdieu gives the impression that television appearances are going to have, in the long run, the same educational impact as his lectures at the Collège de France. His concern here is probably a little exaggerated as, fortunately, it is doubtful that the French academic world has sunk to such a level. Bourdieu's analysis is more valuable where it indirectly highlights the fragility of knowledge in the social sciences; the uncertainty of disciplinary boundaries or the scarcity of symbolic rewards in an academic field can lead some scholars to abandon in an instant years of scientific autonomy painfully acquired in the anonymity of an academic institution. Bourdieu offers a stimulating insight into the meanderings of the legitimization processes of scientific research. It remains to be seen whether the “corrupting appeal” of television is necessarily an entirely negative thing for intellectuals.