My work with and from Bourdieu: Tools, stakes and commitment

Abstract

My first contact with Pierre Bourdieu’s perspective was during the second semester of 1976. I had just started my undergrad studies in History, at the School of Philosophy and Humanities in the National University of Córdoba, Argentina. Only a few months earlier, the latest military dictatorship had taken over the government of Argentina: tragic times for the citizens, and grim ones for the social sciences and humanities. I spent all my undergraduate education in a dominated School within the local university field, inside a public university system, located in the mid-country. The School of Philosophy was a dominated-dominated institution inside the university field. The military government imposed their political conditions which devastated the School. Nevertheless, there were other facets in the University’s trajectory: The National University of Córdoba where I studied is the oldest in the country; it was the cradle of the movement known as «Reforma Universitaria»1 in 1918, and had a leading role in social and political uprising events that identified the city by the «Cordobazo».