"Mon Dieu", Bourdieu: The Magic of the Academy and Its Ancestor Cults

Authors

  • Geoffrey Hobbis CREDO, AMU-CNRS-EHESS and Concordia University
  • Stephanie Hobbis Concordia University and IRIS, EHESS

Keywords:

Bordieu, magic, social capital, material culture, academia, ancestor, knowledge production, legitimacy

Abstract

By looking at the vast corpus of texts on Pierre
Bourdieu in an unexpected way, this article uses a material
culture analysis to study the social relations of academics. We
find Bourdieu's name and his dictionary of concepts used not
only as signifiers of his theory but also for its mana, the effi
cacy of its social capital. Bourdieu is a ghost summoned by his
inner circle that has turned his name and concepts into totems
that are reinforced through ritualized writing, hence feeding the
development and stewardship of Bourdieu's (and academia's)
ancestor cult, its magic.

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Published

2013-11-30

How to Cite

Hobbis, G., & Hobbis, S. (2013). "Mon Dieu", Bourdieu: The Magic of the Academy and Its Ancestor Cults. Anthropologica, 55(2), 441–453. Retrieved from https://cas-sca.journals.uvic.ca/index.php/anthropologica/article/view/746