문학과 지성사

The Feet of Atlas reviews and assesses Pierre Bourdieu’s life and philosophy and how his ideas are understood in the Korean context. Lee Sang-Gil, a cultural theorist known for his readings of Bourdieu and Foucault, compiles twenty years of research into this “socio-biography,” in which he establishes a close connection between the personal and academic lives of the late French thinker. Pierre Bourdieu is one of the most cited scholars in the field of sociology, and books on and about him flood the bookshelves worldwide.

However, research trends in South Korea have remained at a standstill, in contrast to those the global academic community. It has been over twenty years since Bourdieu’s social theories were first discussed in Korean academia, and the concepts from his books, most of which are now available in Korean translation, are used frequently and irrelevantly. The country’s current lack of active research on Bourdieu thus leaves a lot to be desired.

Placing emphasis on Bourdieu’s concepts of intellectual field and international circulation of ideas, Lee Sang-Gil argues that reflexive sociology can be a valuable tool for the long-term goals of Korean academia, namely the decolonization of knowledge and creative reception of Northern theories. Part Three is especially interesting in this regard, as he offers an in-depth assessment of how the field of sociology in South Korea has framed and received Bourdieusian sociology as a substitute for Marxism, a branch of postmodernism, or a kind of social philosophy according to social and intellectual contexts.