This Critical Reader provides a new perspective on the workof France's foremost social theorist Pierre Bourdieu, by examiningits philosophical import and promoting a fruitful dialogue betweenBourdieu and philosophers in the English-speaking world. The contributors include leading philosophers who criticallyassess Bourdieu's philosophical theories and their significancefrom diverse philosophical perspectives to reveal which dimensionsof his thought are the most useful for philosophy today. Thesediscussions also raise important questions about the currentinstitutional limits of philosophy and how those limits may beovercome through a more robust alliance with the social sciencesand the practical social world. The contributions cover Bourdieu's use of central figures in theAnglo-American philosophical tradition; his relationship toanalytical philosophy and pragmatism through his concept ofhabitus; his position in twentieth-century continental philosophy;the political dimension of his work; the function and limits of hisnotion of "the field"; and the relation of his explanatory modelsto new directions in the philosophy of science. The book alsodiscusses some of his most recent writing not yet translated intoEnglish, and it concludes with a chapter by Bourdieu in which heanalyses the diverse structural problems and the transformationsinvolved in importing intellectual ideas from one national field toanother. The volume also offers a specially prepared comprehensivebibliography of Bourdieu's publications in French and English from1958 to 1998.