“Bourdieu as an Anthropologist of Social Viability”

12 November 2025, 17:00
Hörsaal B 001, Oettingenstr. 67, 80538 Munich

Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Oettingenstraße 67
80538 München

Pierre Bourdieu’s Political Economy of Being (Duke University Press, 2025)

Over the years, I have tried to develop what I have called an anthropology of viability: an anthropology concerned with the way individuals and groups struggle to make their lives viable. Without wishing to reduce Bourdieu to an anthropologist of viability, my book can be read as an attempt to highlight what I see as Bourdieu’s contribution to an anthropology of viability. In this talk I will try to show how a struggle for viability is an enduring dimension of Bourdieu’s analytical disposition toward society. Analysts who inherit and internalize this disposition start seeing struggles for viability in everything. Whether they are analysing someone picking flowers in the countryside, talking about the latest Netflix series they have seen, looking for a job, or demonstrating for or against asylum seekers, they find themselves asking, What conception of a viable life is behind what is being done here?

Respondent: Jan David Hauck (Rachel Carson Center)

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