Pierre Bourdieu and the Uses of Photography in Sociological Research

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Franz Schultheis
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 432887028

In an essay from 1974, Howard Becker writes: "Sociologists today know little of the work of social documentary photographers and its relevance to what they do. They seldom use photographs as a way of gathering, recording or presenting data and conclusions." Becker could not know that Pierre Bourdieu was already systematically practicing exactly this in the late 1950s. During his Algerian field research, Bourdieu produced several thousand photographic documents, which he used as a source for his studies over the following decades. Photography served him both as an instrument, method, and in cognitive means of his research, then became the initiation point for the gradual extension of his "visual sociology" to the field of research "about" photography in his renowned study Photography. A Middle-brow Art, and the extensive yet systematic use of visual documents in his Revue Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales or works such as Distinction.Throughout his career, Bourdieu makes use of "visual statement formations," which in its extension and diversity is probably unique in sociology. He systematically refers to photography as a part of his research concepts concerning observation, description, and analysis of social phenomena and consistently uses it as an instrument of scientific research. Thus, he expands the research and method repertoire of the social sciences by original empirical-photographic image practices. It is, therefore, all the more surprising that this visual component of Bourdieu's work has not yet been adequately appreciated. The main reason for this drawback is probably the fact, that at this point only a fraction of Bourdieu's photo archive has been published and its scholarly examination, including the preparation and publication of its contents, has yet to take place.In our view, closing this gap would, on the one hand be of great interest for an adequate reception of Bourdieu's research practice and theory formation: To the extent that photography served him as an essential tool to an objectification of social reality, this opens up the possibility of reconstructing in detail the intensive entanglement of visual and discursive approaches that characterizes his work. Of particular interest here would be to reconstruct Bourdieu's visual sociology's contribution to the elaboration of central concepts such as "habitus," "symbolic capital," or "symbolic violence".On the other side, a scientifically founded examination of Bourdieu's visual sociology could serve to revive the use of photography in social science practices. Bourdieu's photographic work would offer the necessary potential of the empirical foundation, methodological stringency, and social-theoretical reflexivity to achieve this goal in an exemplary manner.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants