social world

is in existence prior to any questions of knowledge. There is not first an isolated subject that must be related to others... rather, the isolated subject is derivative upon a prior intersubjective existence.

. One of the dimensions of our existence is the social world, and exist prior to any questions of knowledge. There is not first an isolated subject that must be related to others... rather, the isolated subject is derivative upon a prior intersubjective existence. (Landes 115)

is the object of three modes of theoretical knowledge: (1) primary experience (Sartre) (2) objectivist knowledge that structures primary experience (Levi-Strauss) (3) practice, which makes possible a science of the dialectical relations between the objective structures to which the objectivist mode of knowledge gives us access and the structured dispositions within which those structures are actualized and which tend to reproduce them.

“The social world,” Bourdieu wrote in Outline of a Theory of Practice in 1972, “may be the object of three modes of theoretical knowledge, each of which implies a set of (usually tacit) anthropological theses” (1977:3). The first mode of theoretical knowledge, Bourdieu associated with Jean-Paul Sartre. This mode of knowledge “sets out to make explicit the truth of primary experience of the social world” (1977:3). The second mode of theoretical knowledge, Bourdieu called “objectivist” and he associated it with Claude Lévi-Strauss. This mode focused on the linguistic relations that structure primary knowledge of the social world. The third mode of knowledge, Bourdieu attributed to himself: it is a theory of practice, and it represents a break—though I would suggest, a synthesis as well—from both existential and structuralist modes of knowledge. Its aim is “to make possible a science of the dialectical relations between the objective structures to which the objectivist mode of knowledge gives us access and the structured dispositions within which those structures are actualized and which tend to reproduce them” (1977:3).

social world, n.Definitions

social world