Bourdieu interview: The politics of protest

SOCIALIST REVIEW INDEX

Pierre Bourdieu has become a leading figure in the radical movements that have swept France in the last few years. He talked to Kevin Ovenden about anti-capitalism and resistance


The Weight of the World was recently published in Britain. It describes through interviews in the early 1990s the 'social suffering of contemporary society'. Why is life getting harder for most people?
There are similarities between what has happened to people's lives in France and in Britain. The main issue, of course, is neo-liberalism and what I call the retreat of the state. The state has abandoned a lot of areas that it was involved in, such as healthcare, education, and social provision.
When we conducted this study it was only beginning. Now it is far worse. So for example, in France neo-liberal philosophy has become embedded in all the social practices and policies of the state. It has become internalised in the minds of the political establishment. The minister of education who was recently forced out of office, Claude Allègre, was very similar to the one you have in Britain. He introduced into education so called 'tough policies'--a drive for efficiency and productivity.
Instead of looking very carefully at how education works, the neo-liberals opt for a very simple solution. They create competition between schools and between the directors of schools, who have to compete for budgets and for students. This competition is fake--it is artificially constructed. It does not arise spontaneously from the way the education system works. The education system was not perfect. I was very critical of it. But instead of correcting it and providing the means to better it, they destroy it by introducing this capitalistic vision of education.

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