Without modernity

The virtue of Pierre Bourdieu’s “timeless” historical sociology and its affinity with postcolonial critique

Abstract

This paper seeks to answer three questions: (1) Did Pierre Bourdieu have a theory of modernity? (2) How did Pierre Bourdieu treat the differences between traditional and modern, or modern and postmodern (or late modern) societies? (3) What might explain his rejection of the theory of modernity? In answering these questions, the paper makes three claims. The first is that for Pierre Bourdieu modernity is not an epoch of great importance, and that he has essentially neither a theory of modernity nor a theory of modernisation. The second is that this should not be seen as a defect or deficiency of his work, but on the contrary as its virtue. The third is that Pierre Bourdieu consistently rejected colonial subjugation; his decision to reject the theory of modernity may therefore be based on a critique akin to that of postcolonial critique.