A Sociologia é um Esporte de Combate (Multi-Legendas)

SOCIOLOG Y IS A MARTIAL ART [Edward Said in Chicago] Pierre... Good evening. Or, rather, good morning. I'll introduce you and then I'll put you on. Okay, Pierre. You can begin now. It's terrifying, To have such stage fright. My mouth is all dry. Luckily, I had a glass of water. It's incredible. - The worst is over. - But it's hard. It's really terrible to be so nervous. That's linguistic insecurity for you. It would have been different in French. But that's life. [José Bové] We refuse this intolerable logic, the logic of money, which is crushing everything, making

every citizen a potential outcast. We are here today to say no to the tyranny of money, to say that citizens must reclaim power. Before going into court, [for dismantling a McDonald's] We, the accused, make this oath that if French justice does not allow the debate to take place, if the witnesses are not allowed to speak out, if the peasants of South America, Africa, Asia or the United States can't express themselves, we shall leave the court. We want nothing to do with that kind of justice! All together! All together! That raises so many questions... I studied

sociology. It's always fascinated me. I'm 32 now and... The question is, how should one live? It's fascinating but... In fact, I owe this situation to you. I often tell myself that you triggered it all off. What impressed me most about you, the reason why I loved your writings so much at the beginning... I believed I was free but I wasn't free at all. Symbolic violence and all that... Me, I've been living exactly what you write about for the last fifteen years. At times, I love your stuff, I want to thank you at other times, I

get really mad at you. - PB: You have reason to be... - And the media are all over you now, that really annoys me. - The media insult me! Fifteen years ago, I remember No one knew who you were Mention Bourdieu now, and you sound ridiculous. But it must be interesting for you to analyse that. But your work is subversive because you make people... Things are going to start happening. I've listened to what you say about culture. I'll let you go, sorry... Three years ago, at those meetings, in Grenoble you were there Yes, we were

just talking about them. That was a great moment. To me, you represent... There are two or three people... I have two living legends, Cavanna [French writer] and Bourdieu Thank you. A kiss! On camera, too! Hello, how are you? Working hard? - Okay? - Yes, thanks. Shall I do a sound check? It's the jingle. So-so-socio-Iogy: The scientific study of social phenomena among human beings. Ready. Wednesday December 1 st. From six to seven pm on RDC 95.5 FM: With our special guest, Pierre Bourdieu. Pierre Bourdieu, I feel that there is an imperative not to be intimidated by

words. So tell me what a sociologist does. What do you do? And, if I dare ask, what purpose do you serve? Right. I heard the definition which was given, a bit ironically. I made a note of it... "Sociology, the scientific study of social phenomena among human beings." I doubt if anyone understood that. I certainly didn't! Like so many dictionary definitions, it's a complete tautology, it says the same thing twice. I'll try to explain it a bit better. Like all scientists, the sociologist tries to establish laws, to grasp regularities, recurrent ways of being and to define

their principle. Why do people do the things they do? Why, for example, do teachers' children do better at school than working-class children? By "why," I mean "how is it that?" How is it that things happen that way? That it happens like that in society, and not otherwise? Welcome to all of you who have just joined us for this special program on Pierre Bourdieu who is with us today. The central theme of your work is "social reproduction". You've developed some very effective tools for interpretation. Could you explain to all of us who might not be familiar

with your work, what social inequality is, why it exists, what purpose it serves, and how it ends up becoming legitimised. That's a very big question, but a valid one. Does inequality serve a purpose? It's a very controversial issue, one that is much discussed. I'll start with social reproduction, since you mentioned it. I think one important thing that I have attempted to show, is that the social world is not in a state of perpetual change. When I began to work in sociology, one of the favourite words of some "sociologists" was "mutation". "Everything is undergoing mutation..." Even

today, they say that men are changing because women are changing, etc. Everything changes constantly... It seemed to me, quite early on, that there's stability, there's inertia. So I tried, using statistical techniques, to document this inertia, to uncover the constants that make science possible. It is because there are constants that we can understand things. But I've also tried to explain why things are the way they are. Now, we come to inequality. Among the factors that explain the permanence of inequality, you have first the transmission of capital. A rich father can leave his son money to launch

a business, for example, if he doesn't do very well in school, if he fails at everything even his studies at one of those business schools where daddy's boys go nowadays. The father can set him up, give him a start, and by this token he will "reproduce" himself. He won't fall down the social ladder, he won't become a worker. But today there's another kind of capital, which I call "cultural capital". This is more difficult to define. It's language, first of all, a certain mastery of language, like speaking "proper" French. Of course, everyone in France speaks French.

Even immigrants who just arrived speak French too. But they speak a French that is worthless on the "school market". If you speak that kind of language, you will earn a straight F. So it's language and everything that comes with it. It's what you acquire in a "cultured" family, from daddy telling you stories, from reading books, even children's books. All of this is a capital: These are scarce resources, unequally distributed. And those who have more of it, because of this unequal distribution reap the profits attached to scarcity. If everyone had the same amount, if everyone spoke

perfect French with no accent, there'd be no advantage to it. It's because there are differences that it pays to speak "good" French. There is a beautiful study done by an American sociologist which showed that middle-class children, children from the bourgeoisie know how to give the schoolteacher just what she wants because they come from the same background. The teacher's just like mummy. The teacher calls them "my darling" or "honey" and they're happy, they know how to react, so they are well perceived, they get good marks and they're happy. So you have certain factors that depend on

prior knowledge, not school knowledge, but just as important. How to behave, not to throw your schoolbag on the floor, how to keep your notebooks tidy, etc. There's another related factor, observed among individuals with the same cultural capital, another factor of inequality is goodwill toward the school system, what is called "docility", from the Latin word docilis: "disposed to be instructed". For example, the difference in achievement between boys and girls at the primary school level, seems to me... - Girls do better than boys. - Yes, they do, at least up to quite a high level of secondary

schooling. And this is because they are more "docile". That doesn't mean it's in a girl's nature. It's because they're brought up to be docile, they're better prepared to give the school system what it requires, which is cultural goodwill, looking at the teacher in the right way... And it pays, it is rewarded. And of course, rewards provide added incentives. These are just a few factors but it's a lot more complicated... What about men? They're more reticent. They have their sense of honour. In a way, school is harder for them. You know, this could take hours... I

don't want to oversimplify, but cultural capital is a very important element. And today, increasingly, in contemporary society, in developed countries but also in other societies, the reproduction of inequalities is achieved more and more through the transmission of cultural capital. Another example. When I began my work there was a lot of talk about social mobility, in the United States "in one generation, you have self-made men", and so on. Well, that's baloney. There are now studies, partly inspired by the work I did in France, which have shown that in the States inequalities due to cultural capital are

even greater than in France, because entry to the top universities is doubly controlled by capital: First by economic capital, because it's very expensive, and second by cultural capital, which, like here, is inherited. And in Japan, where a student of mine did some research at Todai University, you will find the sons of the Samurai... To get back to your question, There are inequalities, and these inequalities tend to perpetuate themselves, But I don't say that they are perpetuated automatically... But you didn't answer my question: Do they serve a purpose? Well, that's a question that belongs to metaphysics.

The sociologist doesn't have to take a stand. We know that there are societies... there is at least one, studied by a friend of mine, the anthropologist Mary Douglas, it's a small-scale society where differences hardly exist at all. It's an archaic society. And it works very well. This is a response based on fact, but I'd rather put the question aside. It's a topic of discussion but I don't think we can answer it... - Because it's too complicated? Because it's complicated and because I can't answer it. Why is it so complicated? Can you explain that, simply? Because

there are important political issues at stake here, It's a political question, not necessarily a scientific one. To ask the right scientific questions, you must often set politics aside. We're dealing here with political issues and especially issues related to "legitimacy", the word you used. There are people who would like to legitimise... How do things end up legitimised? - Sorry? - The question I asked earlier... Yes, well. There are those who say... Roughly put, it's the dominant who say that inequalities are justified. It's in their interest to say that inequality is a good thing. It's a general

principle validated by research: People tend to say that things are right when they are right for them. It's a social law that's simple but true. It's important to know for purposes of self-defense. When someone says something in a debate, just ask yourself, "What are his social reasons for saying that?" If a priest tells you that there is no salvation outside of religion. Well, yes, his job depends on it! I'm oversimplifying a bit but it's often the case. It's a simple law but it's useful for self-defense. And I often say that sociology is a martial art.

It can come in handy. - Sociology is a martial art? - Yes, a martial art. Like all the martial arts, you use it in self-defense... and using it for foul play is strictly forbidden. Thank you, Pierre Bourdieu. Thank you. It's done, I made a photocopy. You'll let me know for Leroux and Rouanet. Marie-Christine said you're free every day but Monday... Monday morning you have your workshop. Early afternoon is fine with me. - Any day, early afternoon? - Yes. Okay. Shall I shut the door? No, leave it open, so I can keep an eye on you!

We'll just do the beginning to see if it's worth it. Shall I sit next to you? Is that for the Sayad? - It'll take a while, then. - No, I just want a look. - It's not great but... - What time is it? Five o'clock. You know that Martine's here also to work on the archives? - You approve of the railway strike? - Yes. I curse you these days! Well, I feel sorry for you but... I was a victim, too. I was in Versailles, and they announced "no more trains"! But I took it very well.

They're in the right to strike. That was at the very start. But if it happened every morning... It gets tiresome. - It would bother me maybe. - It depends where you're going. If it's to visit the king's castle in Versailles or to travel to work... - I don't mean to nag... - Go on, take a walk! - Your workday is over, Mrs. Christin. - Thanks. - You can go home now. - Goodbye. Start on chapter one? Oh, she's always after me! Don't you think she's awful? What do I have to look at? She is a

devil, though! She was only pulling my leg. That's our relationship. We're always throwing insults at each other. How can I explain? We argue about everything... nothing serious, mind you, but we're always at it... But it's a good relationship, because that way... it never gets really aggressive but there's none of that kind of fake politeness. We both pitch in. I enjoy it. And I don't think she does so badly on it either. There! - Is your surname French? - Yes, my family name. On my great-grandfather's side. - My assistant's name is Riviére. - Oh? "With great

affection for a great master" That's too kind! Not at all. One of the reasons I started writing was to encourage people. Why do they say you come from the French Basque country? No, I'm from Béarn. B, E, A, R, N. It's a small province very close to the Pyrénees. It's very close to the Basque country but it's quite different. The dialect there is Gascon, which is very similar to Catalan. So what sort of family were you born into? My father was first a small farmer and then a postman, a low-ranking public employee. Why did you

start studying sociology? Oh I don't know, it just happened, little by little. So, reading 'Masculine Domination' one could think that men, too, are victims of this domination. - Yes... So how do you explain why they don't change? - Is it that they can't... - Let's not overstate this. They're victims only in a relative way. There's a phrase written by Virginia Woolf, I think, which says that they play the best role. In French we say: They have the good part, they always come off best. Which means that they're visible, that, like in a theatre play, men

have the leading roles. This has many advantages. They are visible, whereas women are invisible. They speak, whereas women keep quiet... But there's a price to pay for playing the lead role. Now, why don't things change? Of course things are changing but a lot less than one might think. The reason is that it all happens at a deeply unconscious level. In French we're always saying, "It's stronger than I am." - Well, that's it. - It's fate. Not quite, it means, "I can't help myself." It's stronger than I am... I remember when my mother got old, if

I told her off, she'd say to me, "I'm too old for you to change me." It's stronger than I am. - How do you experience all that? - Me? - Do you think that you are macho? - No. Well to some extent, inevitably. - In your structures? - There's always a trace. If not, then what I say would be untrue. Here's a suggestion to save time. I'll ask my questions in Spanish and you reply in French, okay? Is it true that you said that you can't expect normal behaviour from a woman in a skirt? I'm

not the one who said this. It was a fine study done by an American woman who analysed... She said, "Imagine all the gestures you..." She was talking to a man, she said, "Imagine that you're wearing a rather short skirt and you have to pick something up off the floor." She devised this gymnastics exercise for men. It's a superb piece of work, it makes you aware of things that even women are unaware of doing or not doing. You mean women aren't fully aware of the fact that they're dominated? Yes. And that's what symbolic domination is about.

It's a form of domination that works insofar as the person dominated isn't fully aware of it. And so she is, to some extent, an accomplice to that domination. Senor Bourdieu, do you think that men should change their behaviour? Yes, but I don't speak in terms of... That's the trouble with sociologists, this is why I always seem to be sad, pessimistic and deterministic. I never say, "He should." I say, "You have to find a way to compell him to..." That's all. There are men of goodwill, who are willing to change. My book has been read by

many men who told me "it's tough reading!" But they too are not aware of it either. There's that whole chapter on Virginia Woolf. I wrote that because she was a great theorist of feminism, I think she wrote some great things, on the suffering of the dominant. Since a great feminist had said it, so could I. There is a sentence by Marx which applies very well to men. Marx said, "The dominant is dominated by his domination." It's a beautiful sentence. I think that the masculine dominant in a country like this where things are a question of

honour, I think that men suffer from this male chauvinism, from this duty to be virile, which is a terrible burden. - You think so? Are you a male chauvinist yourself? I don't think so. But it is a heavy burden. If you made a list of all the things men have to do for themselves, and so on, which bother them, it would be a very long list. War, for example. In traditional societies, war is a man's job. One criticism laid at your door is that you comment more on masculine values than on feminine values. Can you

sum up the values of the "eternal feminine" for me? What are women's values? Here again, that's something that I don't want to do because... I never say "masculine values". - Not as a sociologist, as a man. - As a man? That's a very difficult problem. I'm very fond of what are known as "feminine values". But we must not forget that they're largely the product of masculine domination. - They're not women's own values? - Yes... no... They're not part of women's nature. In the current state of affairs, women have properties that I find far more attractive

than men's. As a matter of personal preference. - Properties? - Characteristics. They're more modest, more discreet, more intuitive, more caring... they take more interest in others, they... What I should say is, "They're more likely to be such." One should always think statistically, it's more precise. They are more likely to possess those qualities than a man is, everything else being equal. And that's fine. Also, they're more likely to be docile at school. Docile, from the Latin docilis, for "willing to learn". In French, docile also means "subjugated", "gentle", one who does not rebel. A question on happiness.

You've discussed it several times. What should one do to be... happy? Happy? That, I don't know. - In truth, I have no answer to that. - No? So a sociologist can't answer that, can give no hope, can only point out the laws? He can give some answers, but as a matter of personal opinion not as a sociologist. Your personal opinion, then? We could talk for hours... Well, as a personal opinion. One must do what little one can to change things. Yes, I think that's it. We all have a small margin of freedom, so each of

us must do what little he or she can do to escape the laws, the necessities, the determinisms. I could go on for some time. Thank you very much. Here we go, so 'The Balcony'... 1868, Just for the record, this is the first painting I ever saw. I was a little boy, in an issue of the magazine L'IIlustration, there was a reproduction of 'The Balcony', which has remained dear to me ever since. It surprised me greatly then to see the world portrayed this way. I'll have to be quick. We don't have much time left. I won't

talk about the thing I could have gone on about for hours, which is 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergéres'. I'm going to rush through this a bit, too bad... 'Le chemin de fer' [The Railroad], there. This demands a formalist reading. At first glance, the railings which materialize the composition. But what I also find interesting is that the railings divide social space. Here, we are on the side of the bourgeois flaneurs, the woman is reading a book sitting down, with a little girl... Is she a governess? In any case, we're in the world of the bourgeoisie. The

railings separate us from the world of work, on the other side. It's not just a figure of speech, it's for real. And we have the destruction of the maternal figure in this depiction of a mother - if that's what she is - who is distracted, looking elsewhere, maybe watching a passer-by. But she's not engrossed in her role as a mother. That's a feminist reading, I didn't find this on my own, but I think it's a very accurate reading. So you can see how my theoretical model works here... That you should always think of a painting

in relation to the space of paintings that were painted then. Doing something one way is always not doing it the way others would, but without necessarily trying to stand out. To understand what someone does you have to understand what that person is not doing, too. It's that simple. This is a teaching of structuralism. To understand a phoneme, you must place it in a system of phonemes. Having said that, I come to the painting by Manet. Very quickly, in substance, he is responding to a series of challenges. He constructs himself in opposition to the academies, to

romanticism, against Delacroix who copied him, against tradition, and in the end even in opposition to impressionism. He spends his time "getting free" as we say in football, But not with the purpose of distinguishing himself. Not at all. He distinguishes himself as a bonus. Yes, that gives the publication date of the work. Or of the review. No, it's the date of the review. Martin du Gard, that's earlier, Maulnier, earlier... Mauriac Claude, no, Pagnol, earlier, Suarés, earlier, Yourcenar, later... Faye, later, Guillou, I'm not quite sure about that one. Mauriac, Grasset, Fayard... What the hell is this? There's

no mention of Beckett or Simon. There's no Beckett or Simon and we... - Aie-aie-aie... - Wait, maybe we lost... Do I have to do everything myself? No, and don't pretend you do! Oh, she's horrible! You see how she uses... She's horrible! I'm going to work with someone who's less crafty, less twisted, to give a better image. You don't mind that it's the 1984 edition? No, damn it! It's the only one we've got. - There must be more recent ones. - Well, we don't have them. My hypothesis is that those people who are here, with high

Jurt values... A letter from Godard. Ah? Many thanks. Do you need a reply? - No, I don't think so. - Thanks. Who from? Jean-Luc Godard? Pulling out all the stops, hum? Very mysterious, like all his work. These are excerpts from his film. - You know... - 'Histoire(s) du Cinéma' Histoire(s) with an "s". He does have talent, you have to say. I don't understand a thing. It's annoying. It's rather beautiful but I don't understand a thing. I'm no poet! It's true that poetry is another way of perceiving things, intuitively. I think that he means something, I

don't suspect... He definitely means something. There's a bus with a poster "My Girl". And he says, "I wondered, looking at this document showing people in public transport, "if we are indeed both seeing the same thing and if, consequently, "we could later claim to try to tell the same story, the true story. "It seems - alas for us and too many Kosovars - that we can't. "My Girl" will tell you: The romantic rendez-vous with truth "was ill-prepared. "Gone with the wind, as gossips say. "Goodnight, you sleepers. This high-minded film "in which most of us didn't hear

what you describe "as - undo the name - political discourse..." There! "...as - undo the name - political discourse..." What do you make of that? Not much really... but I haven't read the whole letter. But that's all there is. There's nothing more, I read it all. He's testing you. If you don't understand the same thing he does, you won't be able... No, I understood that bit. But afterwards, when he says... Well, whatever! You'll be talking past each other at this lunch meeting... From the word go. It's tough... Poor old Bourdieu! No, if you do that

I'll be intimidated. It will be awful... No, you have to be careful. Shy people are intimidating. When you're shy, you make others shy. - Shall we do it? - Very well. Could we see that again? That's when I was teaching, in 1954. I was teaching philosophy. At the Ecole normale? No, it was my first year as a teacher in high school. The pupils were almost the same age as me. That's in 1968 but I don't remember exactly... Next there's a public statement on the right to civil disobedience. Yes, regarding the Algerian war. Had you already

been drafted? Yes I was already in Algeria, I had already been drafted. - Must have been in the 1960s. - Did you do any research? That's right. I was in Algeria from about 1955 to 1962. - And this one, a long time ago... - Yes I'm a lot younger there. I was cuter, too. See why I don't like to be photographed now? And this is you with the unemployed there. That's right. Why did you do that? - As encouragement? - Yes, as encouragement. It was an interesting movement. I wanted to be there. Look at that!

That's the rugby team. It's in Paris. - That's me. - Right. What position did you play? Stand-off. Shall I write it down? Shall we stop now? Thanks. 1942, there, I'd been granted a state scholarship. - This was to go to Paris already? - No. It was for the high school in Pau. - In Pau. - Yes. And then I got a scholarship all through university. In the 19th century there was this rivalry between the inheritors and the scholarship boys. In the struggles among writers, to infer that someone was dim-witted, you said he was a scholarship

boy. I was in the camp of the scholarship boys. On a scholarship. Sociologists are always on the wrong track! Thank you. I suffer a lot from the isolation. You're lucky in France, there's so much going on. Belgium is a small country, which is completely dependent because of its finance structure. So, in 1981, owing to the Thatcher effect, the right-wing government dismantled all the structures for funding research. We depend almost entirely on money from the Commission, from Europe. As for the national budget... Well, I'm a political scientist, I earn a monthly wage, and I'm lucky to

have that. But I have absolutely no means for research. I pay for my phone calls. You can call me but if I call you, I have to pay for it myself. My pens, my paper... So it's back to the way things used to be in Belgium. To be an intellectual, to be an autonomous thinker, you have to be well-to-do, someone with means, and you have to fund yourself. Independently wealthy. I've been saying to my students for over ten years now, "You are like artists were twenty years ago." You needed daddy's money, or a wife who's

working to support you. That's what being a sociologist means today. Unless you produce sociology for the powers that be. If you do sociology which answers the dominant social demands, you can make a living. There are positions with the National Centre for Scientific Research etc... And there is research funding. But if you want to do sociology, not critical sociology, just plain rigorous sociology, well, you have to know that you're like an artist. You have to buy your own pencils, pens, erasers, your personal computer and so on. I have to go now. Let's do it this way:

If you have stuff, send it to me. On my side, if there are meetings, I'll let you know. When your work has advanced, let me know and I'll quickly try to organise something with people working along the same lines. Fine. I'm glad we've finally met because you're the one who gave me the research bug 15 years ago. It's a famous paternity. It's nice of you to say that. See you soon. Goodbye, and see you soon. After 2 years of left-wing government, the rich are richer and the poor are more numerous. Okay, one more question? Do

you use... Do you base your work mainly on your personal experience? Not mainly, but it does play a role. But it's not raw personal experience. I know what I thought 30 years ago and I know what I think now. My personal experience sensitizes me to things that others wouldn't notice, makes me nervous or irate at things that others would find normal. So it plays a role... But let me not answer about me, Let's take the example of Foucault. Foucault is one of the greatest contemporary philosophers, who did a lot of very important works in several

domains. In the United States some people got annoyed by Foucault's subversive actions. Foucault became an idol on American campuses, and that annoyed conservatives of all sorts, academic conservatives, but also political conservatives... Cultural conservatives as well as political conservatives. So these people wanted to demolish Foucault, There is a book entitled 'Saint Foucault'. So some people idolised him and others wanted to demolish him. They called him a sado-masochist pervert, a homosexual, and so on... In short, they tried to deduce the whole of Foucault's thinking from his sexual orientation, from his particular sexual tastes. Now, it's true that

to understand what Foucault did, you have to understand that he was homosexual. He wouldn't have done what he did if he hadn't been homosexual. Many of the problems he had... If you're interested, read Didier Eribon's biography, which was published by Fayard a few years ago. When he was a student, he once tried to commit suicide. He had major problems related to his homosexuality, something which at the time was highly stigmatised, even among intellectuals. I think that many of the questions that he posed about normality, medicine and so on, are related to problems he had encountered

as a homosexual. But there are many homosexuals and there is only one Foucault. What he did was to transform his existential problems, his suffering and his questions, as a homosexual, he transformed them into scientific problems. He fought all his life to elaborate, to... In other words, it's not raw homosexuality that produces good philosophy. In the same way, it's not raw experience, whatever it may be, that yields good sociology. The problem is how to work on one's own experience to make something of it. I think I'll stop there. As I always say, you have to carry

out a reflexive analysis. Sociologists have to do a sociology of themselves, carry out a socioanalysis of themselves. That's very important. It's only by socio-analysing one's own experience, that one may use it sociologically. The very work of research is a socio-analysis. Things come back to you, but they are transformed in the process. You learn a lot about yourself by studying the educational system. By studying that, a teacher learns more about his unconscious, than by studying the works of Freud. Right, we'll end it there, for good now. You've been very kind. You could do one thing for

me. You'd be very kind if you would write and tell me, individually or collectively, what you didn't dare tell me here today. Yes? I'm busy now. I'll call you back. - Ready? - Yes. So there is a capital of knowledge about the social world that you inherit from your milieu, from your social background. It's like I said earlier, it's not sufficient to practise sociology but it's a start if you know how to turn it into scientific problematics, into caveats, etc. My own social experience, which was a bit of this kind, the world I knew, was

not the Parisian intellectual world. And this was reinforced by my experiences in Algeria, where I carried out research in dangerous situations. It happened two or three times, the answer I gave determined whether I would come out dead or alive, also how I asked the question. I had no other protection in a civil war, a war of liberation, I had no protection other than my demeanour and my wits, my way of doing things and being careful. And this I believe taught me a lot. You can read methodology books there are lots of essential things they don't

mention. That's how I learnt, because you had to watch out for everything. We had almost metaphysical discussions about what it means to produce science in this context. Every day we'd be confronted with problems. Well, that will help you get a good head on your shoulders, it makes you think an awful lot. I think I've lived off the huge capital of knowledge... I aged very quickly, compared to a young sociologist doing his quiet bit of research on, say, teachers in a high school. I aged a lot. And so a lot of questions came out of that,

a lot. So I've lived on the capital, not of ideas but of questions, that I collected at that time. I think that it was important. Now, obviously, the other thing, I add this, it think it will fit your purpose very well... I had the idea, because I was studying the region of Kabylia and I saw many analogies with the Béarn in terms of family structures, relationships between the sexes... And I thought, "In order not to use my experience "in an uncontrolled manner, "I must go and study my own village in the same way I studied

Kabylia." I had two objectives: First to control this experience, but also, to study what it means to go from folk experience to scholarly experience. It was around the time Lévi-Strauss had done 'Tristes Tropiques'. Everyone was reading it. I said, "I'll do an inverted 'Tristes tropiques'. "I'm going to return home, "instead of going far away, "I'm going to do research in my home village, "in the least exotic place. I will make the banal exotic." So I interviewed old buddies of mine, And very often I knew the answers, I knew the answers. So what is going on

here? What does it mean to ask a question when you know the answer? It means that in other cases you ask without knowing the answer. So that got me thinking a lot. I realised quickly that these guys knew the essential, they knew how to explain it. But they didn't know it like I did. It's not the same to know abstractly that, okay, girls no longer want to stay in the countryside, etc. Anyway, it got me thinking a lot about the two things, about being an anthropologist and... Another thing, although I could go on here, is

that when you come from a lower-class background, from a culturally dominated region you necessarily feel cultural shame. I was ashamed of my accent, which I had corrected when I went to the Ecole normale... When I went back South to my home - Pierre Carles will understand - when I got to Dax and I heard the accent, I was horrified! Even today, certain accents make me physically ill. And yet it is the accent that I had. Recently on the radio I heard Tillinac, a pro-Chirac writer who has an accent from Brive. I felt like killing him!

I was sickened, and not just by what he was saying. Here's a true form of symbolic violence. I remember another time, it was in Toulouse, I heard this fellow, who sang avant-garde poetry with a Toulouse accent. It was horrible, horrible. He was going, "Oh Toulooooose!" It was downright horrible. I shouldn't react this way, it's my job to understand this, it's my own accent, and yet I experience this as atrocious. But you just can't sing avant-garde poetry with that accent! The Occitan activists are going to kill me. Oh, well! Can I cut in a bit to

make it easier for you? It depends. If I'm following a line of thought I'll be worried you'll cut in when I'm onto something. But at other times, yes. Because you've just answered several questions, including some I haven't even asked. I know, I know. That way I can ask them later. I know. But what's happening is, I'll start on something, then I have to go all the way to get back to the starting point. So it's not easy to... I've got some... It's the same. - You can have mine, there. - Thank you. - Let's change

the subject. - Yes, let's move on. We'll talk about women. The concept of symbolic violence is one that you use. Could you talk a bit about that? Yes, well... Yes, masculine domination. In fact, there's the problem of sexuality and that of domination. For example, there's a fine piece of research that I cited, by an American sociologist, who studied the differential use of telephone among men and women. She shows that it is women who use the phone a lot more, a lot more than men. People say women are tattle-tale, They are always on the phone, always

prattling, etc. In fact, she measured this statistically. And showed it's only normal because, in the division of domestic labour, in the family, women have a function, tacitly acknowledged, which is to maintain relations - what I call the social capital - with the rest of the family. They do this with their own family but also with their husband's family. They make phone calls, buy presents, organise birthday parties, call people back... That's an example, just a very small one. The problem is to gather all these observations, like that of the behaviour between a woman and her gynecologist...

Some fine work has been done, as often by men as by women, some very fine work. I wanted to try and show that there's a coherence here. The coherence is that it is a domination of a very special type, which is not based, whatever may be said, on physical violence. Of course there are battered women, I know the statistics about it. It's not based on economic violence only, on the fact that, because women work less often, they are less free to leave the home. It's based on what I call symbolic violence, this violence which results

from the fact that people have in their minds certain principles of perception, ways of looking at things, which are the product of the relationship to domination. In other words, women participate, as it were, in their own domination. This doesn't mean that they're stupid or that it suffices to... It means that a gamut of social structures from childhood, in the family, at school, etc., lead them to incorporate, to internalise, the masculine/feminine relationship. In order to fight this, to subvert it, you must first take this into account. Now, this will sound conservative. It's the same as with

education, people will say "Bourdieu is conservative". "He says that women are dominated, that they contribute to their... "He's a male chauvinist..." No. You have to recount that this is the way things are in order to find ways to... Where is this domination reproduced? It gets reproduced in the church, in the state, in the school... So there are battlefields and you can set out objectives. Whereas feminism says the battlefield is in the home: So you will struggle with your husband, "You wash the dishes!" Well, okay, that's not bad, but it's not the only battlefield, there are

other sites for struggles that are much more important. For example, there are political struggles for health care, social benefits, etc. An example I discovered after writing my book... I always say the state has a right hand and a left hand. The right hand is finance, the budget... In short, everything kingly, everything masculine. And then there is the feminine side. It's hospitals, nurseries, schools, social welfare. Obviously, in the hierarchy of the ministries, the masculine dominates the feminine, as everywhere. The Finance Ministry dominates the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Minister for the Budget dominates everyone. Having said

that - and I was very pleased when I found this - when people say that we're destroying the public sector, it means the domains where women are employed, like hospitals, and the domains women benefit the most from, like social services, welfare, nurseries, etc. So this gives you a political line. And I guarantee you that a feminist movement, if they followed this political line instead of engaging in endless talk "Our interest as women is bound up with the state, "that is, with the social state, and doubly so, "insofar as we partake of it, "We're more likely

to be nurses than men "more likely to be teachers than men..." Besides today teachers are nearly all women. "So we must defend the state. "We're more likely to work for it and to benefit from it, "because we're the ones who need it..." That's an example. But this doesn't fit in at all with commonly accepted ideas, the usual vision... Well, I'll stop there. Loic Wacquant is a professor of sociology at the University of California in Berkeley He's also a researcher at the Center for European Sociology of the Collége de France. His book 'Les Prisons de la

Misére' ['Prisons of Poverty'] is just out. You advocate extending the Guaranteed Minimum Income to prisoners? Yes, I make a case for extending that program to inmates in France. They have been systematically excluded from this social program, when granting them this allowance would reduce the racketeering in prison. We know that a large portion of the prison population in France suffers from such destitution that they have to engage in prostitution to get enough money to buy soap to wash themselves, to wash their clothes and their dishes. The other reason is that incarceration is very often a heavy

financial burden on the families of inmates, who generally come from the most deprived strata. So it would help lift a heavy economic burden on families which are, as it were, being penalised, although they have committed no crime. And the last reason, a symbolic one, seems to me to suffice in itself. To grant this benefit to an inmate, who is entitled to it on the outside, is to express that he continues to be part of the civic community, that he hasn't been excluded from society. He had a right to it outside, so why not inside? It's

a way of minimising the separation, the symbolic branding, the stigma that all prisoners bear, thus it helps, or at least it avoids hindering their reintegration. Okay. No one cares about the reintegration of anyone in prison. - There are small organisations... - It was terrific to end on that. - On the Guaranteed Minimum Income? - Yes. It was the normative moment in the book. I had to battle Bourdieu to put it back in. Because the book was too long. But he agreed. He'll cut it out at editing. No, don't do that... We agreed that if there's

only one good thing to come out of this book, if it can help to push in that direction, then it will have been worth it. You've cost me 5,000 francs! As soon as I arrive you're getting at me. Well, I have to. It's true. Mrs Christin, so now you're keeping mum? You get here after the battle, that's all. You've cut just one sentence, is that all? Couldn't you make two paragraphs? No, it's not possible. It won't fit. Look, there's just one centimetre. We've been at it all morning. The layout editor said, "Let's hope they don't

all start doing this." You're setting a bad example. Everything you do is a catastrophe. She won't tell you, but the layout editor, a nice fellow, who doesn't know you said, "That's as far as we can go, otherwise we'll run into problems." No more requests? You let us get on with it now? Alright, but I'd like to reread it. No, you've handed your manuscript in, and Bourdieu is the boss... I know. But I'll keep bugging him until... It would be silly to leave misspelled names in it. We'll do everything we can but, really, this is crazy.

I realize that very well. But you're the one who set the deadline last January. "By the end of the month!" It never looked like I'd be finished by the end of January. No, but I was being realistic. You made a presentation in my seminar which could have been published as is. I gave you carte blanche, so I'm not going back on that. I think that it's in your interest. For a Frenchy, what does it matter once you've understood Murray? It's overkill... I think that accumulating figures is all very well, when you're on something that seems

improbable, you can be accused of exaggerating, of being anti-American... But when it's to demonstrate that this Murray guy is a fascist who crossed the Atlantic to... okay, we get it! So adding one more quote... I see what you mean, the insert on Murray going to England, where they welcome him like royalty. At the same time it's good, it's revealing and... Really, trust me. I didn't do the edits casually, I did them seriously. - I wouldn't trust anyone else. - I did them seriously. I think that this effect of... it's flabbergasting and you think, "It's not

possible!" Or, "reality overtakes fiction." So if you're piling it on, from the reader's standpoint you reach the saturation point. You think "But we get it, "these people are monsters. They'll say anything". "Why does he keep harping on it? "Okay, we're convinced." Some say that an engaged intellectual is an intellectual involved in politics. That's not true. An engaged intellectual is an intellectual who intervenes in the public sphere, which may be the political sphere, but without abandoning - otherwise he's a clown - the ordinary demands of his ordinary activity as a researcher. If getting involved in politics

means you start spouting nonsense, then you stop being an intellectual. I'll stop here. Who wants to speak? This needs rethinking. Because last century, capitalism was a matter of people who owned companies and were active within them. Today it's a matter of managers trained in universities, who are responsible for nothing because they have short-term goals, and then someone else takes over. We need to know that the shit we find ourselves in was thought out, conceived in the universities. It is the same professors, or the same professorial body, who participate in creating both sides. Thank you. That

kind of generalisation is intolerable to a sociologist. You can't say "Universities", as a whole. It's like a 68-meter tortoise, it doesn't exist. Which universities do you mean? Is it business schools, American business schools? Is it the MIT? You have to enter into the detail of things. Frédéric Lebaron, with us here, has done work on this. You can read it soon. He's just analysed the winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics. That's the new kind of political struggle. He uses very sophisticated statistical techniques to analyse in detail the space of producers of this economic discourse in

the name of which we are told that we need labour flexibility, etc. By means of a refined analysis, he shows the structure of this space. Old-style political critique, despite some useful stuff from Marx, misses its target entirely. What we need to fight this is micro-surgery. Which forbids saying things such as you've just said. It's not universities in general, professors in general. You have right-wing and left-wing professors, different disciplines... And it shouldn't be possible anymore - and this isn't censorship - to talk like that, or someone should answer, "Sir, I agree to some extent, just a

bit, but... not entirely." Yes, that's right. But perhaps if we both go over it we'll get it done. You don't have a copy with you at home? Take a look. Yes, I'm off now. What did I want to say? Oh, yes, the other thing is, since I have you on the line, the interview you did with the headhunter from the Seuil publishing house... You've lost it, have you? It would be useful for the book, wouldn't it? Okay, okay. And... when you rummage through your papers, if you come across the interviews with the women from the

women's magazines... We could use them one day. That's all. I'm almost done. You're calling for an economy... - Of 'Gluck'. - Of happiness. Yes, of happiness. A new economy of happiness. It's an idea that is both... Today it might seem a bit original and even utopian, whereas it's really quite banal. All it means is that the economy as it now is, according to the dominant definition, takes into account costs and profits, etc. But it erases social costs and social profits, everything that's not quantifiable, everything that's not calculable, everything that can't be anticipated by computation, etc.

As a result, we severely underestimate costs and we overestimate the cost-profit ratio. For example, if we really took into account - this is just an example - the cost of urban violence... When European governments or other governments ask sociologists to study violence in schools, in the banlieues, there's always money for this. What do they want? Recipes to make violence go away. Do we need more policemen, more social workers, more teachers? Does school play a role in the violence? But beware, how do we protect the schools? Those are the questions that are raised. In fact, they

systematically exclude the question of whether the causes of violence do not reside outside that universe, in things that are totally obvious, such as the unemployment rate, job insecurity, temporal insecurity, the fact that the future is uncertain, elimination from school, the fact that some children, because of their background, both social and ethnic, the two being often linked, are fated to be eliminated by the school system. The causes of violence reside in the whole structure. What is not perceived is that savings made on one side... as when they say, "Let's cut costs, "let's downsize, "let's layoff 2,000

people to cut production costs "and be competitive on the world market..." The savings made on one end are paid for at the other end. The 2,000 people who are dismissed, especially if they're young, will take tranquillisers, become alcoholics, take drugs, become dealers and then killers, and keep the police hard at work. If we balance the social costs induced by a purely economic approach to cost-saving, it's easy to see what bad economics this is. That's all. What we have is very bad economics, based on the dissociation of the economic and the social. But what's social is

economic. There's nothing which lies outside of this enlarged economy: Sadness, joy, happiness, taking pleasure in life, the pleasure of walking the streets without being attacked, the quality of the air we breathe... All of that pertains to economics. Now with ecology, they're starting to say... But with what difficulties! It's a law, another social law: There are social costs which affect everyone. This is based on research done by a Dutch sociologist. He showed that in the 18th and 19th centuries, advances in the standards of hygiene were fostered by the fact that the great epidemics such as the

plague, crossed class barriers. An epidemic of the plague didn't stay in the lower-class districts. It killed everyone, including the bourgeois. So they built sewers, they implemented all kinds of measures of hygiene in the public interest, but only because these were also in the interest of the dominant. Today, for example, with Chernobyl, the radioactive cloud isn't going to stop at the Oder-Neisse border, nor at the Rhine, nor at the border of the upper-class districts of Paris. That's when we practise ecology "in the public interest". Medical doctors, who are not a progressive element in any country, are

beginning to say, "Oh, pollution levels are very bad "for people with a heart condition. "Who suffer from asthma, too." But nobody knows what the consequences will be in 20 years. In 20 years, we'll be saying, "There's a correlation between cancer rates and urban life." But it will be too late. What I say all the time is that social science is telling us now that measures which seem very rational "economically" today... "We're going to produce more Toyotas with less steel!" As Leibniz used to say, "We'll tie up more dogs with fewer sausages". This way of running

the economy has terrible effects which are said to be "secondary", but in fact are primary when they concern public health, physical and mental health... personal sanity, for example alcoholism, which is a social phenomenon. I think that all these measures which make the stock market soar - it zooms up each time a measure like that is taken - will be paid for by certain people and eventually by the collectivity. It's a bit like the sewers in the 18th century, paid for by the collectivity. What I'm preaching is enlightened interest. I say to the dominant, "You can

be cynical, "you may not care what happens to the people, "but it's stupid, not just mean." After all, I'm no moralist. "If it pleases you to be like that... But it's stupid! "Because you'll end up, like in California, "in your gilded ghettos with armed guards. "You won't be able to go out without watchdogs, "you'll need security systems everywhere, "you'll be as if besieged in your fortress, "surrounded by a violence you will have created yourself." Of course, the system is very powerful and so far it's "under control"... I don't know how many millions of Blacks they

have in prison... There you go! This is the report. There are lots of photocopies. She normally sends it by e-mail to everyone. Anyway, here is a copy. - Is this everything? - Yes it's all there. This is what the newspapers call a penetration indicator. It would be a sort of indicator of the penetration of neo-liberalism. Okay so we have "suicide", all right. Then we have "drugs", "death caused by drugs", then we have "antidepressants"... What else do we have? The number of murders, but? Here too it's very multi-causal, though. For instance, in Ireland or in Spain,

there are more murders than in other countries because of the political circumstances. Yes but we can correct that, we can see that on the table, Spain and Ireland are higher... In my view, delinquency linked to neo-liberalism isn't primarily murders. - Agreed, agreed. On the other hand, the evolution of incarceration by sex and age, if there is a table for that, here we have a question mark, if the data exist, that would be much more relevant. I agree. Couldn't we use "unemployment", "part-time work", something like that? Indicators of casualization. We should have one. We had "imposed

part-time work". That's under labour market: Share of imposed part-time work... Same, we have the figures for 1996. Isn't it true that if we don't disaggregate indicators by occupational category, we are erasing one of the main properties of neo-liberal policies: That they are class policies? Take, for example, What Duisenberg said recently, "If wages were raised, interest rates would rise immediately." Do we have statistics on that? We can produce them. For life expectancy at birth, the evolution of the difference in life expectancy by occupational category, between workers and the professions, that's an indicator which is pertinent in

the long-term. That's a problem, I know a bit about this. The problem is that the difference tends to decrease. I don't want to always say that the indicators we use go against our thesis, but it's well-established that the health system is more efficient nowadays than it used to be. Over the long run. So we risk attributing to the effects of neo-liberalism what are simply the consequences of a health policy which... In education, the effects are visible 20 years later. The effects are delayed. I'm always saying this. One strength of neo-liberal policy is, first, its secrecy

and its effects become apparent only over the very long term. By the time people have discovered what the policy is, people are way behind, with regards to the WTO, etc. And to discover the effects of this policy, it's even later. It's true that perhaps our approach here is naive. We can get round that by saying that there are different temporalities, and elaborate the explanation you just gave. It'd be silly to say... - We surrender? - Yes. The long term/short term thing makes your head spin. It seems to me we could almost find a parallel with

what Keynes said about the economy. He said, "Of course the cycles balance out." And, "In the long term we'll all be dead." But we still have to manage the period when we're alive. We could always say, in a sociological approach, "In the long term we'll all have adapted." But there's still the short term, and that's the crux of the matter: The degree to which there's a mismatch because of the disparity between economic structures - with their own logic - and social logics, which don't have the same temporality. That's what is at issue here. Now in

100 years everyone will be neo-liberal or whatever. But, for now, not everyone is, and that creates extremely violent situations. I missed the beginning, I'm afraid. But, regarding short term/Iong term, wouldn't the last ten years be the right time span for us? Implicitly, the problem we are raising - the relationship between neo-liberalism and anomie - is this: Since the 1980s a new policy has emerged. Are we able to see its effects in the indicators? That's basically what we were doing, but not explicitly. Rémi, in fact, was the one who kept bringing up the long term, and

made us aware of that. So, having said that, what do we do now? Maybe it'll work out well after all, but my spirits have just taken an uppercut. Mine, too. But anyway... But at the same time, it makes things even more interesting, on an intellectual level. Yes, because we've eliminated all the objections. Champagne said, we can say that of all the indicators. If everyone of us puts his critical machine to work based on his competencies, on each of the indicators, we'll grind out the whole bit to a pulp. You attack demography... No, I mean it!

As for me, I'll tackle education. Champagne will tackle alcoholism. True, he's messed up alcoholism. I'll have to tell Franz, that's a good one. He said that alcoholism is a factor favourable to neo-liberalism because it's diminishing. It's also a good indicator for work integration. In any case, it's not a very clear indicator. No, but the increased consumption of Coca-Cola is a good indicator of the advance of neo-liberalism. Or the increase in the number of obese children. Or McDonald's outlets, for example. We take the Mickey Mouse index and the McDonald's index... We could do a cartoon with

them! We'd call it the Mickey index, rather than the Nikkei index... What time is it? What time is our appointment? At the restaurant? At the Collége? Well, we'd better be going, then. I'll try to give you a snapshot of the analysis presented in detail in this book. I'll avoid giving you too much statistical data because I think Serge has used up our entire quota for this evening. For this I'll start from an article entitled "Insecurity: The lessons of the New York model" written by the great criminologist, Philippe Douste-Blazy, house representative and mayor of Lourdes, president

of the UDF caucus in Parliament, who tells us... with the help of very nice photos. We have a photo of Mr. Douste-Blazy looking very earnest as he talks with a New York policeman. Then we see him in the street - I wish I could show you this - we see him in the street with some kids playing ball and laughing. He's in the background, with police officers and a social worker in a track-suit. He is wearing a lovely tie, looking at the kids. And then he tells us: "The safety of persons and property is a

topic that politicians often hesitate to tackle." That's rather flabbergasting since the newspapers and TV are full of it, but we'll let that pass. "It's not surprising, then "that insecurity is continually increasing in France. "Recent figures are an indictment of the present government..." Now pay close attention to the structure of the sentence: "Since politics is the opposite of resignation, "I decided to go to New York this summer..." That's wonderful! "I decided to go to New York this summer "in order to study the methods of what is recognised worldwide "as an exemplary success in crime fighting." Here

we have a perfect example of the new law-and-order ideology, this new neo-liberal "common sense" about punishment that comes to us from the United States, which was elaborated by a group of think tanks based on the East Coast of the United States as part of their war against the welfare state. First, at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, they advocated the dismantling of welfare policy. They were successful since in 1996 a Democratic president abolished the right to welfare support in the United States and replaced it with a programme of enforced wage work

for recipients. This is the transition from "welfare" to "workfare": Compulsory work under conditions that are exempted from labour laws and escape the usual wage standards. And then, after having argued for "small government" in social and economic matters, these same policy institutes and the same parties who back them, the same countries and the same professors who broadcast this ideology, will argue, with a lag of about ten years, for "big government", for more state intervention in policing and penal matters. What I'm going to try to show you is that there is no contradiction in asking for less

state here and more state there. There is a coherence. This is a shift from the social welfare treatment of inequalities and the insecurity that inequalities generate, toward a police and penal treatment. Roughly put, the regulation of the casualized fractions of the working class passes from the left hand of the state - to borrow Pierre Bourdieu's terminology in 'La Misére du Monde' - ['The Weight of the World'] From the left hand of the state, which assists and educates, the hand that provides housing, education and medical care, to the right hand of the state, the hand that

punishes, the policeman, the judge, the prison guard... The actualization of the neo-liberal utopia does not mean "small government", the withering away of the state. It means less state on the social and economic front, it is a "laissez-faire" policy in matters of work, in the regulation of the labour market, when it comes to the mobility of capital. But, at the same time, it means "big government" an intrusive and paternalist state, which results in the reduction or even the destruction of liberties especially for those condemned to precarious wage work. The real stake of the load of baloney

that we hear about violence today, is not crime and delinquency. The real stake of this new discourse about crime and insecurity is to legitimize the shift from the social welfare management to the penal management of poverty. The purpose of this penal management of poverty is to normalize and impose casualized wage labour. Just like in the 19th century, it took a cultural and institutional revolution - social work, for example - to impose wage work, today it takes a mental, cultural and institutional reform to impose precarious wage work as the normal horizon of labour for the working

class. The rise of this liberal-paternalist state, liberal for the upper classes, for the employers, paternalist for the working classes, especially the casualized fractions of the new service proletariat: Such is the face of the new state that we have today, which brings about the advent of the "new economy" When you hear "new economy", ask the person who's talking about it which "new economy" he means. The "new economy" of Microsoft, computers and the Internet, or the "new economy" of the prisons, Corrections Corporation of America? Thank you. You're on the road too much. It's true, it's not good.

It can be fine psychologically and so on, but... - It's also a way of avoiding... - Yes, you said it ...chaining yourself to the work you have to do. It's a procrastination technique. Okay, but it's not good. Now it's an absolute priority: In the next three years you have to put out three books, no bullshitting around. - I know. I've begun: One down. Okay, but it could have been a lot better. You could have done it a lot faster, based on the talk you gave in my seminar. A book like I did on television, very

short and light. And then a second book, that would have taken more time than you took on this one. This one is neither one thing nor the other. It's a book for going to battle but it's top heavy with scientific material. It might have been better to do a bit more... A bit more or a bit less. That's it, it's too late now, that's the way it is. This is why, this time, the deadlines... One way of holding you back is to set deadlines. With 'La Zone', for example, if you have no deadlines the introduction

is going to grow to 150 pages And you'll be done for. I do realise that myself. I set myself these outlandish standards. I should have wrapped up 'La Zone' in 1994. But you live and learn. That's the craft sinking in. Yes, but time is flying by. It's true, time is flying by, you must not... I don't want to be a pain, but you'll end up panicking, you'll say... No. I realise now that I have only one thing left to do: I have to sit down and write books. Not another one hundred articles. There's no point.

You must do nothing but that for a year. It's a pain to have to say it but... At least for the serious writing phase, that takes three months when you're doing nothing else. Because it's thousands of small decisions to make. "Do I put this here or there?" And for that, you must have nothing else to think about. I know that, for my major books, Well, quite often, all the empirical work was done. It was usually during the summer, which I stretched out, when I'd go away from June to the end of September... I didn't do

only that, I'd play tennis and go to the pool, but at bottom, I was thinking only about my book. Often, very minor details, to change a subtitle for example, sometimes you're stuck, You thought that this was a section, when it should be its own chapter... - It changes the book. - Completely. You think about it all the time, it becomes an obsession. And so, if you interrupt that with a trip or something, you lose the thread. When you take a clean break, for three-four days, I go back to the text, I've forgotten everything. Then you

have to reread everything. Now when I break off, even if it's only overnight, I write a few lines to carry me through the transition, because so many times I found myself unable to finish a sentence that I started after an interval of... Even more so for a week. That's, say, three conferences on different topics, with fifteen different people and three languages. It has a terrible effect on you. That's why I say you must have two years... Next year, when I go back from New York to Berkeley, I think I'll spend the whole year in Berkeley,

including the summer. Because I want to finish everything, including the boxing study that year. And move on to something else. I'm not going drag it along with me forever. I think it's crucial that you get a book out by February, an important book. You should do the boxing book for 2001 and the ghetto book for 2002 The stock-taking of... all your stuff on America. - I'll finish it before then. - You'd better! Mr Bourdieu, can you hear me? Do you hear me? Do you hear me? My colleague told me to speak softly so I'm not

too loud in Gunter Grass's ear, via his mike. I get the feeling that we're about to start... There's a question I'd like to ask. I've noticed, but it's probably part of the discipline sociology demands, that there's no humour in these books. The comedy of failure, for example, which plays an important part in my books, the absurdity which arises from certain confrontations... there's none of that in this book. Don't misunderstand me. I don't mean that the comic and the tragic are mutually exclusive. The boundaries between the two are always blurred. But today we don't analyze it

with the values of the Enlightenment. Yes but... My feeling is that this sense we have of having lost the tradition of the Enlightenment is linked to the overthrow of our whole vision of the world, that was imposed by the neo-liberal vision which is the dominant vision today. I think... and here in Germany I can use this comparison, I think that the neo-liberal revolution is a conservative revolution in the sense that people talked of a "conservative revolution" in Germany in the 1930s. A conservative revolution is a very strange thing. It's a revolution which seems to... which

reinstates the past, returns to the past, and yet it dresses itself up as progressive. Regression is turned into progress. So that those who fight this regression seem to be regressive themselves, those who fight terror look themselves like terrorists. This is one thing we've suffered in common, we're frequently called archaic. In French we say 'ringard', old-fashioned, backward... - Dinosaurian! - Exactly, dinosaurian. That's their great strength. Even what you just said, I believe, if I may say so, partakes of this idea: We're told: "You're not funny!" But these are not funny times. There's nothing to laugh about.

I didn't say that. I didn't say these were funny times. All I said was that the sarcastic, sardonic, diabolical laughter, which literature can liberate, is also a way of protesting. But this conservative revolution they're selling us today as "neo-liberalism" is just a return to the methods used in Manchester in the 19th century. They think they can turn back history, and they're right. Yes... but the strength of neo-liberalism is that it's applied in Europe by people who call themselves socialists. Whether it is Schröder, or Blair, or Jospin, they invoke socialism in order to practise neo-liberalism. And

this makes analysis and critique extremely difficult because, once again, everything's back-to-front. And critique is... In fact we have surrendered to the economy. Today the state is stripped of its power to a degree the anarchists would never have dreamt of. I never believed that I would see the day where I would argue in favour of more state intervention. But that's where I stand now. I'm in a very strange situation because I find myself compelled to ask that the state be given more responsibility so that it can play its part as a regulator. This is just the

kind of reversal I meant. Paradoxically, we're forced to defend things which aren't completely defensible. Can we limit ourselves to saying that we need to return to more state intervention? It seems to me that if we don't want to be trapped in the game of the conservative revolution, we need to say that we must invent a new state. Otherwise they'll tell us, "You're regressing". There, we've finished. Like in a charter plane just after landing. Right, that's it. "They say we're not funny. "But these are not funny times. There's nothing to laugh about." But you have to

describe... Can I do it? Can I do it? I don't think so. I've been talking for an hour. Almost Another ten minutes. Well, we have to go back. I said something there, that we should think seriously about what we mean by "local", "location", "relocation"... But I can't do it. It would take too long to go into detail... It's not easy to get to the crux of the matter. No, I can't. There. Please excuse me. There... I should have taken half an hour to reread my notes first. We had planned to go to the hotel first...

I was busy right up to the last minute and when you have old notes like this... But, for all that, you managed very well. And the discussion part went very well. On the whole it was a success. The audience was very kind. Yes. They were looking forward to seeing you. We're looking for a title, for our film on Pierre Bourdieu. A film title. Off the top of my head? I don't know, maybe something about the way he looks at you. Something about his gaze. He has a very sly gaze, very sharp. I remember, at school,

I was always being punished for being insolent. In fact, it was because of my eyes, always... With a sociologist, it's all in the gaze. Something about the eyes. "The Sideway Gaze"? - The what? - "The Sideway Gaze". No, that's for Sartre. "None the Wiser." No, "I pull one over you", that doesn't sound very good. Like tonight... I don't feel very wise tonight. [José Bové on radio] Well, in our discussions with the farmers here, especially with the Indian farmers, who are here with us... They've done a lot of damage to agro-chemical multinationals. The Indian farmers were

the ones who went after Cargill, after Monsanto, and food multinationals like... Kentucky Fried Chicken. They have a very radical critique of intensive production, so their vision is very ecological in the sense that ecology is political and linked to production. [Radio journalist Daniel Mermet] As concerns junk food, you've managed to demonstrate the link between a finance-oriented economy and what we eat. But, in other domains, José Bové, in health, for example, did you find other movements in Seattle, that managed to establish this link? José... Excuse me. Bourdieu. So, for people of my generation, we were encouraged since

the 1970s to train for jobs which school counsellors and some teachers knew were bound to disappear. That's why, today, there are 35 year-old skilled machine-operators, who are on the scrap heap. It's the same with the younger generation. There's talk about the year 2000, about the Y2K bug, about unemployment going down, about "incivility"... All these words, for us, are... We feel like we're living on another planet, 20,000 leagues under the ground, not under the sea! I don't really know how to answer. I'll ask you not to clap. Because truth isn't measured by clap-o-meters, okay? Leave that

to television. - Not answering me? - I didn't mean you. What does "media-friendly" mean? You know very well. Look at the crowd here tonight. Come on, but let's be serious. Since I'm the subject and object of what you're saying, it's hard for me to answer. But if being media-friendly means attracting lots of people to an discussion in Val Fourré... That's not what it is. It means being in the media every day... Thank you, Sir: It means being the instrument of the media, the diligent servant of the media. It's someone who says in the media what

the media ask their media-friendly intellectuals to say, which, all too often, means saying nothing. To talk without saying anything, to give false explanations, to say, "Oh, another riot in Val Fourré." It's... I don't know what. It's spouting bullshit with authority and confidence, and being paid for that, getting invited for that. That's what media-friendly is. That's an intellectual argument. All right, all right. No, wait, I'd like to say... I'd like to say a few words. Wait! We have a problem here. I'm sorry but tonight we're having an intellectual debate, Mounir, which means we're thinking this out

together. For me, "intellectual" isn't a term of abuse. First thing. So I'd like us to try to have... Mounir, it's easy to stand there and have a go at Bourdieu, and then feel smart about it. I know you can do it. You've already started. Go on, then! I'd just like to say something. No, don't raise your hand yet. I want to say a few words. I'd just like to say a few words. I'm a bit disappointed by one thing. This debate is called "A reflection with Bourdieu "on inequalities in education and culture". We started off

by talking about education. There's lots to say about that. What I would like... I had hoped that Mounir and others, would say certain things about that, rather than have a go at Bourdieu, would talk about their own experience of inequality. No, wait, can you just listen for a minute? I'd hoped you'd tell us things, interesting things, that you'd give us the benefit of your reflection, which is genuine, which you've carried on for years. I came here tonight to listen to a sociologist. I think there are other people here tonight with things to say about inequality

in culture and education, and who'd like to discuss them with someone like Pierre Bourdieu, but without having a go at him. That gets us nowhere. So who would like to speak? It's hard growing up in the context we grew up in. The inequalities started coming when our environment started changing. Our generation - I was born in 1967 - has very clear memories of our childhood which today's youngsters don't have, because they no longer have the open spaces, the greenery, the vacant lots... Then people came along and started building without bothering that all our childhood was

there. They put up buildings where now you stand in line to draw 100 francs or your food coupons. I think that everyday you're insulted. Lots of people who know this but they keep quiet. They're aware of it but their silence condones it. It's easier to say, "Yes, "I work in the free zone. It's really tough." But in the end, they're not up to it. Proof is, we get teachers they're 20-22 years old, they've already had their heads crammed with, "If you want a transfer, you have to do your time in the zoo. "Then you can

go back home to your Toulouse..." or your Cantal or wherever. They're stressed out when they land here. And the kids, they're not fooled, they can sense all that. We ask for cultural centres, they give us a big police station with these statues out in front, to claim that they too know culture. But if you take away the statues you know what you'll see? Nothing but the police station and the brutality it represents. There are people who want to keep us down. What's the use? Bourdieu's here, he can talk about Seattle, then bang, he's gone! What

do we know about Seattle? People have trouble understanding the Euro. Now it's the Year 2000. What's the Year 2000 going to do for us? Really, what's in it for us? We get these stores where everything costs ten francs. We get sandwiches for ten francs. We're worth ten francs, we get cut-price food, everything's cut-price, we're cut-price. They sell us eggs... Where do you see this: 60 eggs for 20 francs! Then they talk about salmonella... But people here they don't catch on, and they know we don't catch on! I'm talking about inequalities I've experienced here, working as

a social worker. I've done my part, right here where you're sitting. We built this place, but it was always empty because people were scared of Val Fourré. Tonight Bourdieu is here so everyone is here. So I say that inequalities... It's no coincidence. We here in the housing estates, we're a source of wealth, Well, you tricked our parents and our grandparents. And with us it's time it stopped, for real. We've had it all, police brutality, public defenders... We always get the public defenders. You get one and you're screwed! Straight up! Papon [Senior police officer of the

Vichy government], he fucked some people up - excuse my language - and we're supposed to let him off? How do you expect us to believe in anything? We say the justice system only keeps the peace for the keepers. It's true. How many police murders? Just a coincidence? In Mantes, a bullet in the back of the neck. In St-Denis, back of the neck, in Trappes, back of the neck. But wait, who stands up for us? No one! There were movements, but they got bought off. To answer your question: Because they got bought off. On the estate,

there is a special branch cop every square metre. We can't do anything. The cops, they even know our nicknames. They know everything about us. So here we are, enslaved, imprisoned by our own selves. If we want to make a film or use a camera, to do something, to show the truth, our own people are the ones who ask, "Why are you doing that?" Whereas on the other side they can do whatever they want. Everything's been in reverse for a long time now. I think it's time everybody woke up. Give us a real education, give us

people with skills who aren't just here to boast about it and take from us what they can. And once they're out of Mantes-la-Jolie or St-Denis, it's, "Yeah, I worked in the banlieue, It's rough!" I've worked with lots like that. I've been an educator for ten years and I've left it sick of it. There, I'm finished now. Now if you want to talk to Bourdieu, it's Bourdieu, not Dieu [God]! Don't be mistaken! A lot of what he said is true, but there's one thing that's false Said, This cultural centre... When you say, "Nice of you to

come when Bourdieu is here, "but it's empty otherwise." I can tell you that's true. When you come to see a movie and there's two or three of you, the room is really big. But it's not up to them to come, It's up to us, the locals, to come. Mounir called Bourdieu "José" that's because he doesn't know him. That's okay. But, Mounir, I can tell you... I'm answering your question, Said, about people coming here. It's not up to them to come, it's up to us to come, to take action, to do things. We can't wait for

others to do them for us. We're always the ones to make all the efforts and the concessions. When you've got no choice, you have to make them. When we go into Paris, if we weren't artists we'd never get into some places. But when they come here they do as they like. I'm sick of going to Paris and to be turned away, and to see the opposite here. We're asked to make too many concessions, all the time, all the time. Our schools are in ZEPs. [Special education zone] Why should I go to a ZEP? "Zones of

Educational Priority," that's bullshit! Educational Poverty, more like! We expect too much of others. We have to take responsibility. I'd just like to say to Mounir... Not between yourselves! This isn't just conflicting ideas. I'll have a question at the end. This is a good image to give to Bourdieu. Mounir is one of the most active figures in the neighbourhood, and yet he doesn't know you... Can I tell you why I don't? But you could learn a lot from him, Mounir. I've seen sociologists coming here for thirty years. I've seen sociologists by the hundreds. But read some

of his books. I guarantee you, he can help your thinking. My reflection comes from God! Okay, to get on, can I ask my question? Go ahead, otherwise we'll never get on. He said there are bad sociologists and good sociologists, and so he's one of the good ones. Everything depends on money: To some people we're scapegoats, to others we're just an excuse. We've got fifteen minutes left for the debate at the very most. Just a second, I'll let you speak. But for five minutes you've been talking amongst yourselves and nobody gets it. Carry on your discussion

later. We've got fifteen minutes left, so ask your question, and Pierre Bourdieu will reply, and maybe we'll have time for another. We have to stop. It's a debate with Bourdieu But it's a debate between us, too. I understand. We've been rolling out the same old prejudices that we learnt from the education system we suffered from. That what's creates the inequalities. We're here to demystify all that. Noone here has all the solutions, Noone can say, "We have to do this and that." It's all right to say, "We've experienced this and that," but not to lay blame.

Because it's not his fault if... - Are you talking to me? - No, I speak in general. All that's been said tonight... - should I say this? - has been very interesting to me. I think that... - maybe I'm wrong - but at least if my presence has helped bring these things out, then that's something. I don't know if I furnished the occasion, the trigger... At any rate, I'm very pleased to have heard a number of things, some of which are very contradictory, conflicting with one another... and yet interesting and important. That's how I heard

it, anyway, especially what Said said. There was a lot of truth in that, as someone else over there already said, there's a lot of truth in what he said. When he said that... How should I put it? "It's always one-sided, always us who have to make the concessions." He said something very important there. The problem, though, is the pessimistic conclusion. So now I say to him: Why conclude so pessimistically? Why not listen to what was said here on my left? "It's up to us to take action, "to get things moving - I would add -

collectively, "it's up to us to get mobilised. "And maybe we should make some concessions between ourselves "so that we have fewer concessions to make to those we must fight." I'm not preaching fraternity at any price. There are conflicts everywhere. Here too! I think conflicts are, in part, the expression or the consequence of the oppression suffered by the people who've spoken here. The paradox is - and it's as old as the hills - that the dominant divide the dominated. And they don't even have to try to do so. They say "divide and rule", but they don't

even have to. Conflicting interests, antagonisms, prejudice... Someone mentioned prejudice. I'm sorry but I think that he was completely right. We're all full of prejudice. One of the reasons why the work of the sociologist is so difficult is because he too carries prejudice, and he has as much of a struggle against his own as against others'. I found this debate very moving and, deep down, I'm glad that it took place. And maybe... - but this is being optimistic - maybe it could be the beginning of... Someone made a mean allusion to my role in a recent

conflict at the radio France Culture - they didn't mention my name but they obviously meant me - that I had dispatched some agitprop experts at France Culture. For the youngsters who don't know what "agitprop" is, that means professional agitators, they were individuals whose mission was to go among the people and preach revolution. So, if I've done just a little bit of agitprop myself here, which, in all modesty, was in part my intention, and if it's worked a bit, then I'm very happy. One problem is how to continue this agitprop? By creating an association, a discussion

group? How to continue this discussion? In some respects, it's too easy. Bourdieu serves as your scapegoat. It's a classic strategy: Kill the analyst. It's easy: You make fun of him and get yourself noticed. But when Bourdieu's gone, if the effect produced this evening could go on and the agitprop became self-managed, and the agitated became agitators - agitating themselves first of all - then I'd be really happy. I won't have been totally useless. People bad-mouth sociologists, and often with good reason. There are some... I don't recall who said, "The social workers are part of the problem."

But in the work that we do... Well, I won't say it here because a social worker's work isn't fun every day, but their relationship with the people they work with is very complicated. They're in a relationship of bad faith If you read 'La Misére du Monde', there are some pathetic accounts by social workers who know very well that they're helpless and who spend half their time convincing themselves that they serve a purpose as well as making the people they're working with believe that they serve a purpose. Lots of teachers know that they are helpless, and

so on. These are some naive reactions. But I was very moved and maybe this won't just be a flash in the pan. Maybe this room, or another, could become the site where people start to take matters into their hand. That all sounds a bit like I'm moralizing. But we have to take matters into our own hands. We have to get mobilised. I remember, not long ago, at the end of a debate similar to this one, in Strasbourg, with German trade unions, the sort of thing I explained... Four young men of Arab descent addressed me: "What's

the use? My father, grandfather... Exploitation...", etc. And I said to them, "Why not start a movement mobilizing immigrants of all origins?" Well, that's not the sort of thing you say in a university hall. I said, "Why not? Why not?" That's why the only thing I can't agree with in what Said said is the pessimistic conclusion. I don't think there's any reason why... Your conclusion was a bit pessimistic, you must admit that. Yes, okay, the observation, but... The situation we're in is a pessimistic one. When you leave, the problem remains. I agree, I'm not denying that.

I'm saying the observation is pessimistic and rightfully so. But the conclusion was a bit... - at least that's what I heard - "There's nothing we can do." I think that's not true. It's not true and, what's more... - this is a classic - the most bogus structures, structures of manipulation, structures of management, structures of supervision, can be diverted, turned around. Anyway... I'm not here to preach revolution. Two more questions... And then a conclusion from Pierre Bourdieu. The politicians are keeping a low profile tonight. All commissions, in general, when they're set up by politicians, always include

a sociologist. Then the politicians take the essence of what you write in your reports. That's the first thing I wish to say. As resident of this area, I think that the sociologist is more like a housing estate psychiatrist. Whenever there's a problem... I'm sorry, but that's what we call them. "Housing estate psychiatrist"? That's just insulting. And it's not true. There may be some who... Let's avoid internal discussions, not amongst yourselves! That's how we see you. Face the truth! It's true that sociologists are... The category of "sociologist" covers different types of people. Maybe sociologists contribute to

inspiring politicians... No, if only that were true! It's worse than that: They provide warrants to politicians which is a lot worse. Some sociologists, I'm sorry to say... I don't consider them as colleagues, they're scabs, they disgrace the profession... I'm sorry but I'm compelled to say this. I can't express solidarity with these guys. I couldn't care less about them. They don't bother me at all, except insofar as they legitimise a certain generic revolt against the discourse of sociologists, and justify a definite anti-intellectualism. It pains me to hear all this anti-intellectualism. The French workers' movement died of

anti-intellectualism. It was founded on a sort of workerism. Which allowed its leaders to be stupid and to demand stupidity of people in the name of party discipline. That's why I must mark my distance from those people. Because it's too easy to denounce these people who are... Yes, scabs. They're scabs. These are people who pretend to practice a profession but are practicing another. They're a sort of symbolic police force, to put it frankly. One factor which explains why the social movement cannot get organised is this anti-intellectualism. Someone said - just let me finish - that you

might learn from my books... Well, you'd understand precisely this, you'd get tools for understanding this. That's not a plug. I don't give a damn. Be careful not to let your righteous indignation, which is totally justified, blind you and make you deprive yourself of tools for understanding. Someone said, "Bourdieu could teach you something." It's true, I know lots and lots of things. I've been studying North Africa for many, many years - most of you weren't even born. So I can tell you that the book by Abdelmalek Sayad, with whom I worked in the 1960s, and who

died last year, who was one of the greatest sociologist of emigration-immigration, and who wasn't a scab, and who worked in the field right to the end of his life, who did fabulous interviews, who knew how to listen to people... Well, we published a book by him, called 'La Double Absence' [The Suffering of the Immigrant], in which he analyses the condition of immigrants, in which he tried... Before he died, he asked me to finish the book: He wrote this book for people like you. If you refuse that because he's an intellectual, he uses big words like

assimilation and integration, then you're just bloody stupid! Really, that's out of order! You can't do that. I'm sorry but I had to say that. No applause. No, no applause. So that's Abdelmalek Sayad, 'La Double Absence'. It costs 140 francs. A bit pricey but I couldn't get it lower. He was a man with a sensitive understanding and an analytic understanding of things. And his work can maybe help people to regain possession of their own historical identities, of the suffering of their parents, of their grand-parents, the suffering of language, of naturalisation, of the naturalised citizen who can't

escape his origins, and who always carries a stigma. You have taught me nothing, I'm sorry to say, I have read Sayad! I could teach you a few things about yourselves. Even if it sounds arrogant, I don't give a damn! - Because, because... - "Because I believe it." Because I believe it, because it's the truth. I'm not preaching for your good, I don't give a damn. But don't deprive yourselves of these intellectual resources Being an intellectual isn't a disease. I think we'll have to end there. We'll end there. This discussion could go on until two in

the morning. But we can't go on that long. So I thank you all. We'll keep the discussion going between us. We'll see you again. What? Yes, but... Thanks again. Thanks to everyone. Sorry about the last two questions but it's nearly eleven. Thanks to everyone for coming, thanks to the organisers. Thanks to Pierre Bourdieu for coming here. It hasn't been an easy evening, but it hasn't been a wasted evening either. Mr Bourdieu, I'm sorry, but I couldn't say it all. I wanted to make people understand certain facts. That's why I made that quip about "Bourdieu is

not Dieu!" Oh, but I'm with it, frankly. I bet it's been said before. You did well to say that. But there comes a point when we have to make people like you listen to us, so you can pass it on. Or try, at least. To enrich you, to keep you in touch. All that we said will be useful to you. Everything that was said was very good. I'd have liked it to go on longer. Where can we get in touch with you, or write to you? 52 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine... We have to go now

because they're closing. Well, look, we'll contact you somehow. I'll give you the address at the Collége de France. We're trying to be sociologists, but gutter sociologists! Remember that, gutter sociologists! I'll use that one. "As my friend Said, a gutter sociologist, said..." If it comes up again one day... ...from a rastaman. Said was spot-on. That's the reality of everyday life. Yes, it was perfect. Very good. Perfect, all of them. And the other lad who spoke, I've forgotten his name... - And there was... - Aimé. - And the one who told Said... - Abdallah. All of them,

they were great. I think that the idea of a social movement, that's the only way... As long as they keep burning cars, they'll send the cops. We need a social movement to burn cars, but with a purpose... Subtitles by Howard Bonsor and Loic Wacquant Thanks to Pamela Denton, Keith Dixon and Sophie NoëI