This volume presents critical essays from contributors across India and France on reading Pierre Bourdieu in a dual context. It covers themes such as the crises of imperial societies; reconceiving the state with Bourdieu and Foucault; Bourdieu’s theory of the symbolic, and traditions and innovations; the field of Indian knowledge in France in the 1930s; literature and politics during the German occupation; symbolic violence and masculine dominance in the Vichy regime; habitus, performance and women’s experience in everyday life; Bourdieu and anthropology; and documents and testimony from violence in the Bombay riots.

Bourdieu’s work was not always appreciated by traditional sociologists. Rather, he appealed to those who were ready to depart from tradition, those who looked for new beginnings, and those who looked for a sociology devoid of heavy concepts and old metaphors. This collection of articles is based on an Indo-French seminar on Pierre Bourdieu held to honour the work of this innovative social thinker who died in January 2002. His work, as this book shows, is discussed around the world and his conceptual tools are used by scholars to analyze such diverse issues as economic sociology, media, and literature.