Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire

Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad met in their twenties in the midst of the Algerian war of independence. From their first meeting, a strong intellectual friendship was born between the French philosopher and the activist from the colony, nourished by the same desire to understand the world in order to change it.

The work of both men was driven by the necessity of putting knowledge to use, whether by unveiling the relations of domination that structured life in Algeria or by opening emancipatory perspectives for the Algerian people. Colonies were, of course, a customary site of ethnographic work, but Bourdieu and Sayad refused to sacrifice scientific rigor to political expediency, even as Algeria descended deeper into war. Indeed, the act of understanding as a political commitment to the transformation of society lay at the heart of their project.

Based on extensive interviews and deep archival work, Amín Pérez rediscovers the anticolonial origins of the pathbreaking social thought of these brilliant thinkers. Bourdieu and Sayad, he argues, forged another way of doing politics, laying the foundations of a revolutionary pedagogy, not just for anticolonial liberation but for true social emancipation.​

Co-Winner of the American Sociological Association’s 2024 History of Sociology and Social Thought Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award

“This book is a revelation. Pérez uniquely offers insights into the anticolonial thought of two major social theorists of our times: Pierre Bourdieu, and his collaborator and friend Abdelmalek Sayad. Anyone interested in social theory, anticolonialism, and postcolonialism will have to read and reread this innovative, illuminating, and clarifying work of committed scholarship.”
Julian Go, author of Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory

“Deeply researched and fluidly argued, Pérez’s book is essential reading for anyone wishing to grasp the anti-colonial roots of Bourdieu’s sociology and a stunning document on the entanglement of social science and empire.”
Loïc Wacquant, author of The Invention of the “Underclass” and Bourdieu in the City

“A landmark study of the history of social science. Based on exhaustive archival research and original interviews with their contemporaries, Amín Pérez argues compellingly that Bourdieu and Sayad always attempted to articulate politics with social science, and that this did not contradict Bourdieu’s familiar arguments in favor of scientific autonomy.”
George Steinmetz, author of The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought

“Using a wealth of archival material, Pérez shows how Bourdieu and Sayad initiated research, while improvising and under the extremely difficult circumstances of a flaring colonial war.”
Johan Heilbron, The Dutch Review of Books

Amín Pérez is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

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