As discussed in Lecture XIV, structuralism dominated French intellectual life from the 1950s on. The decline in the significance of ‘classical’ structuralism, which set in towards the end of the 1970s, did little to change this. For at least some of the so-called post- or neo-structuralist authors who rose so rapidly to prominence remained very much indebted to the legacy of structuralism. This made it tremendously difficult for non-structuralist humanities scholars and social scientists to make their voices heard within France, particularly because such a stance was generally criticized or even denounced as ‘subjectivism’. It is thus with some bitterness that the authors we are about to consider describe the period of structuralist hegemony. Cornelius Castoriadis, for instance, referred to a ‘linguistic epidemic’, which made clear thinking very difficult as a result of its ‘simplistic pseudo-model of language’ (Castoriadis, Crossroads in the Labyrinth, p. 120). The structuralists' ‘hegemony’ meant that certain nonstructuralist French thinkers were for a long time more influential outside of France than inside it, because their writings did not face such huge (structuralist) barriers to reception in other countries. This has begun to change only recently. French intellectuals are now ready to acknowledge the significance of anti-structuralist thinkers (see also Lecture XX).

The discourse on modernity within the social sciences worldwide has reached a new level of intensity since the 1980s. This discourse was partly stimulated by the criticisms of postmodern theorists. In a certain sense, it was the diagnosis of ‘postmodernity’ which led scholars to reflect on ‘modernity’. The assertion made by theorists of postmodernity that the conception of rationality characteristic of modernity is inevitably linked with aspects of power and can therefore by no means lay claim to universality was bound to inspire contestation. As we saw towards the end of Lecture X, authors such as Jürgen Habermas (The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity) refused to accept this assumption, sparking off a complex philosophical dispute over the foundations of modernity. But the discourse on modernity was not carried on solely with philosophical arguments. It also raised genuine social scientific questions, in as much as new problems arose in modern societies or there was a greater awareness of certain (old) problems than ever before. Sociology at least produced a number of spectacular diagnoses of the contemporary era, which were discussed not only within the discipline but which appealed to a broad public and demonstrated that, despite all the talk of disciplinary crisis, sociology can still contribute highly interesting analyses of contemporary societies. In this lecture we shall deal primarily with three authors who produced powerful diagnoses of the present era in the 1980s, whose effects continue to be felt to this day.

In this and the following lecture we shall be getting to grips with two different sociological theories, symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology, which are oft en referred to in the literature by the generic term ‘interpretive approaches’ and are even confused from time to time as a result. The term is quite problematic, but at least captures the important point that there were undoubtedly other significant approaches than the neo-utilitarian paradigm of exchange theory or ‘rational choice’ and the normativist-functionalist theory of Talcott Parsons within the sociology of the 1950s and 1960s – approaches, moreover, of enduring vitality. Those authors to whose work we may apply the term ‘interpretive approaches’ advocated a fundamentally different model of action than the representatives of rational choice theory, but also one which differed from that developed by Parsons, with his emphasis on normative aspects of action. This also explains the literal meaning of the label ‘interpretive approaches’. First, it gives expression to the existence of a camp hostile to Parsons and his model of action; the representatives of the ‘interpretive paradigm’ complained that Parsons' notion of norms and values, to which action always relates, was insufficiently complex. They were not disputing the importance of norms and values in human action. Quite the reverse. But what Parsons had overlooked, they asserted, is the fact that norms and values do not simply exist abstractly for the actor and cannot be unproblematically converted into action.

While it was essential to examine the biographies of the two German ‘grand theorists’ considered in the previous lectures in a fair degree of detail, in order to bring out the ideas central to their theories, this is not necessarily the case with respect to Anthony Giddens. It is quite possible to explain Giddens' attempt at synthesis in light of the trends emerging from the 1960s, particularly within British sociology, without digressing into his personal history. The key here is conflict theory, which we examined in Lecture VIII; two developments in particular were to play an important role for Giddens.

1. British conflict theory in the 1950s and early 1960s had been closely associated with the names of John Rex and David Lockwood, who – in contrast to the significantly more radical Ralf Dahrendorf – had never broken entirely with the theoretical approach of Parsons, but merely wished to see conflict theory established alongside Parsonian functionalism on an equal footing. Mere ‘co-existence’, however, could never entirely satisfy even the protagonists of conflict theory, and at least the theoretically ambitious Lockwood clearly attempted to break up the rigid opposition between power and conflict theoretical approaches on the one hand and functionalist (as well as interpretive) approaches on the other. In other words, he tried to produce a kind of synthesis. Groundwork had thus been completed that helped pave the way for the later attempts at ‘grand’ synthesis – those of Habermas, Luhmann and Giddens himself.

Both neo-utilitarianism and the interpretive approaches of symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology were reactions to the dominance of the Parsons school in the 1950s and 1960s. In both cases, the concept of action was the key subject of debate. While the neo-utilitarians found the Parsonian model of action overly normative and generally too complicated, believing that it had tended to weaken the explanatory power of sociology, the interactionists and ethnomethodologists thought Parsons' normative conception of action inadequate and insufficiently complex. The neo-utilitarians thus tried to revive the tradition of utilitarianism to which Parsons had bid farewell, while the symbolic interactionists stood in continuity with the American pragmatists whom Parsons had ignored, especially in his early work; by taking up phenomenological ideas, the ethnomethodologists set off along new, one might say dissident, paths. But all three schools wrestled primarily with the Parsonian conception of action, while the problem of social order, let alone that of social change, was paid far less attention.

The rise of so-called conflict sociology in the mid-1950s must be seen against this background; in every sense, it represents an antithesis of Parsons or of a certain understanding of Parsons. Many sociologists felt that Parsons' theoretical conception of order and change made too much of the normative elements of social reality. As a result, according to them, it merely assumed the existence of a stable social order, proceeding without reflection on the premise that societies are static and well-ordered.

In this lecture we examine an author who moved towards a synthetic theoretical project at an early stage, in much the same way as Habermas, Luhmann or Giddens, and who thus became one of the most influential sociologists worldwide from the 1970s on. We are referring to Pierre Bourdieu, whose work was deeply moulded by the national intellectual milieu in which it developed, that of France in the late 1940s and 1950s, a milieu characterized by disputes between phenomenologists and structuralists. But it is not this national and cultural dimension that distinguishes Bourdieu's writings from those of the other ‘grand theorists’ treated in this lecture series. We have seen how much Habermas or Giddens, for example, owed to the academic or political context of their home countries. What set Bourdieu's approach apart from that of his German and British ‘rivals’ was a significantly stronger linkage of theoretical and empirical knowledge. Bourdieu was first and foremost an empiricist, who developed and constantly refined his theoretical concepts on the basis of his empirical work – with all the advantages and disadvantages that theoretical production of this kind entails. We shall have more to say about this later. Bourdieu is thus not to be understood primarily as a theorist, but as a cultural sociologist who systematically stimulated the theoretical debate through his empirical work.

Pierre Bourdieu was born in 1930 and is thus of the same generation as Habermas or Luhmann. The fact that Bourdieu came from a modest background and grew up in the depths of provincial France is extremely important to understanding his work.