Bread and Wine

Bourdieu's Photography of Colonial Algeria

Bibliographic Data

ID3344184
AuthorsAzzedine Haddour (UCL Australia, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume57
Issue3
Pages385-405
Publication date2009-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-954x.2009.01846.x
OpenAlexW1585716590
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited2

The photography of Bourdieu, whilst documenting aspects of his sociological work in Algeria, problematizes the relationship between its photographic referents and their history. To grasp this relationship, I will decode the historical signification of three photographs taken by Bourdieu in the mid-1950s when Tillion published L'Algérie en 1957 and Sartre 'Le colonialisme est un système' situating Bourdieu's photographic and sociological work in relation to both Tillion and Sartre. Although the influence of Tillion on Bourdieu is discernable, especially in Sociologie de l'Algérie, their political positions are at variance. Bourdieu's snapshots provide us with a perspective on how to interpret the causes of the vagrancy and famine in colonial times. Despite his avowed hostility to Sartre, Bourdieu concurs with the latter's critique of colonialism. His three photographs together project a political affinity with both Sartre and Barthes. The impoverishment of native Algerian society was not due to the fact that it failed to catch the train of progress, as Tillion intimates; rather it resulted from its systematic despoilment by colonial France

Archaeology · Colonialism · Ethnography · Field (mathematics) · Habitus · Political science · Politics · Sociological imagination · Sociology · Vagrancy · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History, Culture, and Diplomacy · Law · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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