SOURCE: Marlière, Philippe. “Blessed and Cursed by the Box.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4933 (17 October 1997): 16.

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...