The Interest in Disinterestedness

Pierre Bourdieu , Peter Collier 지음

Polity 2024년 07월 04일 출간

작품소개

책소개

A key feature of those who work for the state, in the legal system and in public services is that they claim to be putting their own personal interests aside and working in a disinterested fashion, for the public good. But is disinterested behaviour possible? Can law be treated as a set of universal rules that are independent of particular interests, or is this mere ideology? Is the state bureaucracy a universal class, as Hegel thought, or a structure that serves the interests of the dominant class, as Marx claimed?In his lecture courses at the Collège de France in 1987 88 and 1988 89, Pierre Bourdieu addressed these questions by examining the formation of the legal and bureaucratic fields characteristic of the modern state, uncovering the historical and social conditions that enable a social group to form and find its own interests in the very fact of serving interests that go beyond it. For a disinterested universe to emerge, it needs both the invention of a public service, or a spirit of service to the public cause, and the creation of a social universe in which individuals can pursue a career devoted to public service and be rewarded for it. In other words, it requires a process of specialization whereby autonomous, specific fields become established in the social cosmos within which a special kind of game that follows the rules of disinterest can be played out.By reconstructing the conditions under which an interest in disinterestedness emerged, Bourdieu sheds new light on the formation of the modern state and legal system and provides a fresh perspective on the many professions in modern societies that are oriented towards the service of the common good.

목차

Editor’s noteYear of 1987-1988March 10 1988Internal reading, external reading and autonomy - Forgetting the microcosm - The coherence and normativity of the law - The space of works and the space of positions - A canonical text by d’Aguesseau - The invention of the public as a new sovereign.March 17 1988Common sense and the feel for the game in a field - The transfiguration of common sense into specialised meanings (sequel) - Producing a love for the game - Two other questions - The double historicization - The Jansenist influence and the problem of self-love - Inventing the public: the oracle effect - Producing the universal with individual interestsMarch 24 1988What is a quotation? - The effect of the social sciences on the social world - From interesting conditions to disinterestedness - The principle of sufficient reason and its suspension - Logical logic and practical logics - Conditions creating interest in disinterestedness - Spontaneous submission to the rules of the field - Genesis of the rules of the juridical field - Business law and pure law - Cross-checking - The force of the ideal - Escaping historicism.Lecture of April 14 1988The claim to be universal - Does a space beyond positions exist? - Two canonical positions - The organicist metaphor - A quasi-divine viewpoint - Durkheim’s lapses - The reinvention of Hegel’s theory - The State, a movement towards unity - Bureaucracy - Durkheim, State sociologist.Lecture of April 21 1988A charitable reading of Marx’s theory of the State - An enchanted vision and a disenchanted vision of the State - The unconscious corporatism of the sociologists - A sociological critique of the social sciences - First false problem: does sociology liberate or manipulate? Second false problem: continuity or break? - Towards a social history of the social sciences - The ‘prehistory of the socia

출판사 서평

‘For a disinterested universe to function, it needs people to be interested in disinterestedness, but it also needs that disinterestedness to be rewarded. More precisely, it needs the invention on the one hand of a spirit of public service (or a spirit of service of the State, a spirit of service of the public cause) and, on the other hand, a public service, that is, a universe in which you can pursue a career when you are sufficiently motivated by the spirit of public service (or at least the appearance of the spirit of public service) to be publicly recognized as having it, with honours awarded, etc.’Pierre Bourdieu

작가정보

저자(글) Pierre Bourdieu

저자(글) Peter Collier