New Uses of Bourdieu in Film and Media Studies

Through his influential work on cultural capital and social mobility, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has provided critical insights into the complex interactions of power, class, and culture in the modern era. Ubiquitous though Bourdieu's theories are, however, they have only intermittently been used to study some of the most important forms of cultural production today: cinema and new media. With topics ranging from film festivals and photography to constantly evolving mobile technologies, this collection of essays demonstrates the enormous relevance that Bourdieu's key concepts hold for the field of media studies, deploying them as powerful tools of analysis and forging new avenues of inquiry in the process.

Guy Austin is Professor of French Studies at Newcastle University, UK. He is the author of Contemporary French Cinema (1996/2008), Claude Chabrol (1999), Stars in Modern French Film (2003) and Algerian National Cinema (2012), as well as articles on French and Algerian cinema for various journals.