Bourdie shakaigaku de yomitoku gendai bunka (Understanding Contemporary Culture through Bourdieusian Sociology)

Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist, is one of the most influential scholars in contemporary sociology. Bourdieu’s sociology covers a wide range of topics, but one of its central concerns is the role and function of culture in society. This book is a textbook on Bourdieu’s cultural sociology—an area that, despite its importance, has not been sufficiently addressed in Japanese sociology.
 
In my view, the most important feature of Bourdieu’s sociology is its thoroughgoing orientation toward empirical research. This is likely why, more than twenty years after his death, Bourdieu continues to exert a major influence not only on sociological theory but also on empirical research. In light of this spirit of Bourdieu’s sociology, what is needed is not merely an explanation of Bourdieu’s “theory,” but a work that serves as a guide to how his theory can be applied to empirical research. This book aims precisely to fulfill that role. In this volume, multiple contributors apply Bourdieu’s theory to various cultural domains in contemporary Japan, including university student culture, music, food, and social media, and use empirical data to clarify the concrete characteristics of these domains. By learning from these attempts, readers are able to acquire an understanding of the significance of Bourdieu’s theory in cultural sociology as well as the methodological points involved in applying it.
 
As for how to read this book, I recommend beginning with Chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 1 concisely summarizes the basic concepts of Bourdieu’s cultural sociology and provides an overview of the field. Chapter 2 offers an illuminating discussion of how we should understand contemporary culture after Bourdieu, focusing on the relatively recent concept in cultural sociology of the “cultural omnivore.” The chapters from Chapter 3 onward may be seen as case-specific discussions. Readers interested in music as contemporary culture should turn to Chapter 3; those interested in university student culture to Chapter 4; those interested in food culture to Chapters 5 and 6; and those interested in social media to Chapter 7. However, each chapter goes beyond its individual topic and offers various insights into how Bourdieu’s ideas and the perspectives of cultural sociology can be applied to empirical research, as well as what it means to critically examine cultural phenomena on the basis of data. Ideally, I hope readers will read the entire book.
 
This book is also a textbook for interpreting, on the basis of data, the sociological meaning of contemporary culture, which has become increasingly complex and diverse, while drawing inspiration from Bourdieu’s sociology. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested not only in Bourdieu’s sociology but also in cultural sociology more broadly.
 

(Written by TAKIKAWA Hiroki, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2026)