Editing Pierre Bourdieu (section)

===Influences===
Bourdieu's work is influenced by much of traditional anthropology and sociology which he undertook to synthesize into his own theory. From [[Max Weber]] he retained an emphasis on the dominance of symbolic systems in social life, as well as the idea of [[social orders]] which would ultimately be transformed by Bourdieu from a sociology of religion into a theory of fields.<ref>McKinnon, A., Trzebiatowska, M. & Brittain, C. (2011). 'Bourdieu, Capital and Conflict in a Religious Field: The Case of the Anglican Communion'. Journal of Contemporary Religion, vol 26, no. 3, pp. 355–370. {{cite web|url=https://pure.abdn.ac.uk:8443/ws/files/47350542/Religiousfields_author_non_format.pdf|title=Archived copy|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304032241/https://pure.abdn.ac.uk:8443/ws/files/47350542/Religiousfields_author_non_format.pdf|archive-date=4 March 2016|access-date=11 February 2015}}</ref>

From [[Marx]] he gained his understanding of 'society' as the ensemble of [[social relation]]ships: "what exist in the social world are relations – not interactions between agents or intersubjective ties between individuals, but objective relations which exist 'independently of individual consciousness and will'."<ref name=":0">Bourdieu, Pierre, and [[Loïc Wacquant]]. 1992. ''An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology''. Chicago: [[University of Chicago Press]].</ref>{{Rp|97}} (grounded in the mode and conditions of economic production), and of the need to dialectically develop social theory from social practice.<ref name="Bourdieu, P 1977">Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. ''Outline of a Theory of Practice''. Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]].</ref> ([[Arnold Hauser (art historian)|Arnold Hauser]] earlier published the orthodox application of Marxist class theory to the fine arts in ''The Social History of Art'' (1951).)

From [[Émile Durkheim]], through [[Marcel Mauss]] and [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]], Bourdieu inherited a certain [[structuralism|structuralist]] interpretation of the tendency of [[social structures]] to reproduce themselves, based on the analysis of symbolic structures and forms of classification. However, Bourdieu critically diverged from Durkheim in emphasizing the role of the social ''agent'' in enacting, through the embodiment of social structures, symbolic orders. He furthermore emphasized that the [[social reproduction|reproduction of social structures]] does not operate according to a [[structural functionalism|functionalist]] logic.

[[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]] and, through him, the [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]] of [[Edmund Husserl]] played an essential part in the formulation of Bourdieu's focus on the body, action, and practical dispositions (which found their primary manifestation in Bourdieu's theory of ''habitus'').<ref>Moran, Dermot, [[hdl:10197/3848|"Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology of Habituality and Habitus"]], ''Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology'', 42 (1) 2011-01, pp. 53–77.</ref>

Bourdieu was also influenced by [[Wittgenstein]] (especially with regard to his work on rule-following) stating that "Wittgenstein is probably the philosopher who has helped me most at moments of difficulty. He's a kind of saviour for times of great intellectual distress".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/perloff/ladder.html|title=Wittgenstein's Ladder Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary|author=Marjorie Perloff|website=Electronic Poetry Center|access-date=3 June 2018}}</ref> Bourdieu's work is built upon an attempt to transcend a series of oppositions which he thought characterized the social sciences ([[subjectivism]]/[[Moral universalism|objectivism]], micro/macro, freedom/determinism) of his time. His concepts of habitus, capital, and field were conceived with the intention of overcoming such oppositions.<ref>{{cite book|last=Jenkins|first=Richard|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aPVaHgUx1f0C|title=Pierre Bourdieu|publisher=Routledge|year=2002|isbn=9780415285278|location=London New York}}</ref>