By the late 1990s, Pierre Bourdieu had become the primary public intellectual of major social scientiΒ’c status at the head of the anti-globalization movement that emerged in France and in other Western European countries. This article discusses how Bourdieu became a leading public intellectual, a role that seems to contrast with his early years as a professional sociologist. It explores what seemed to change in Bourdieu's activities and outlook as sociologist and what seems to have remained constant. It identiΒ’es several institutional conditions that seemed necessary for Bourdieu to be able to play the kind of public intellectual role he did in his later years. Bourdieu's movement from a peripheral position to a central location in the French intellectual Β’eld, the changing character of the Β’eld itself, the growing inΒ£uence of the mass media in French political and cultural life, the failures of the French Socialists in power, a cultural legacy of leading critical intellectuals in France, a unifying national issue of globalization, and the political conjuncture in 1995 all intersected in ways that opened a path for Bourdieu to choose new and more frequent forms of political action. His responses to that combination of factors at diΒ‘erent moments reveal both a striking continuity in desire to preserve the autonomy of intellectual life and a change in view and strategy on how best to do that. The article concludes with a brief evaluation of Bourdieu's public intellectual role.
From social science to politics 1 On