Bourdieu ─ The Next Generation: The Development of Bourdieu's Intellectual Heritage in Contemporary UK Sociology

This book will give unique insight into how a new generation of Bourdieusian researchers apply Bourdieu to contemporary issues. It will provide a discussion of the working mechanisms of thinking through and/or with Bourdieu when analysing data. In each chapter, individual authors discuss and reflect upon their own research and the ways in which they put Bourdieu to work. The aim of this book is not to just to provide examples of the development of Bourdieusian research, but for each author to reflect on the ways in which they came across Bourdieu’s work, why it speaks to them (including a reflexive consideration of their own background), and the way in which it is thus useful in their thinking. Many of the authors were introduced to Bourdieu’s works after his death. The research problems which the individual authors tackle are contextualised in a different time and space to the one Bourdieu occupied when he was developing his conceptual framework. This book will demonstrate how his concepts can be applied as "thinking tools" to understand contemporary social reality. Throughout Bourdieu’s career, he argued that sociologists need to create an epistemological break, to abandon our common sense – or as much as we can – and to formulate findings from our results. In essence, we are putting Bourdieu to work to provide a structural constructivist approach to social reality anchored through empirical reflexivity.

Jenny Thatcher has recently completed her PhD at the University of East London. Her PhD focused on Polish migration and the education market in the UK in which she used a Bourdieusian framework. She is a co-founder and co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group and member of the Early Career Researcher editorial board for The Sociological Review.

Nicola Ingram is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bath. She has published widely on classed and gendered inequalities in education. Nicola is co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group and the BSA Education Study Group.

Ciaran Burke is a Lecturer at Ulster University and author of "Culture, Capitals and Graduate Futures: Degrees of class" (forthcoming Routledge). His research focuses on classed inequalities with a particular interest in graduate employment trajectories. He is a co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group.

Jessie Abrahams is one of the co-convenors of the Bourdieu Study Group. Jessie is a PhD student at Cardiff University. Her thesis is focussed on the effect of the increased university tuition fees on young peoples’ "aspirations". She has been researching in the area of class and education for a number of years now and is also part of the Paired Peers research team. Paired Peers is a six year Leverhulme trust funded project exploring the impact of class, gender and institution on a cohort of young people as they transition to, through and from university.