9 - Interest

Summary

Introduction

Bourdieu's use of the term interest is a good example of the way a particular concept arose and developed over the course of his professional career. In this chapter, we see the way it almost haunts his early work. Subsequently, it emerges as a key feature in his empirical analyses. Later, it is expressed as a fully-fledged concept and joins his other “thinking tools” as a major instrument of analysis. Later still, the concept evolves into different forms; Bourdieu renamed it as illusio or libido. Finally, the implications and ramifications of interest are considered theoretically, which leads to a philosophical exploration of its significance. The concept itself is present in the relationships Bourdieu investigates in his early studies. In this way, we see how practice services theory for Bourdieu: it is named and then its theoretical significance elaborated. This chapter shows this process at work.

An interest in practice

In earlier parts of this book, we have referred to the background to Bourdieu's intellectual worldview as well as to the climate that surrounded him as he set out on his academic career, and juxtaposed this with the strong personal experiences he had at this time in Algeria and the Béarn. Attention was drawn to predominant intellectual trends in France; most noticeably, existentialism and structuralism. Earlier, we also considered the way by which issues of subjectivity and objectivity cut across various intellectual traditions, and how Bourdieu's theory of practice was developed out of an impulse on his part (both personally and professionally) to transcend this dichotomous view of knowledge.