Pierre Bourdieu's contribution to the new economic sociology

This article examines Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of the market, assessing both the scope and limits of the thinking of one of the most emblematic authors of the New French Economic Sociology Following a critical reading of some of his key texts, the article argues that Bourdieu's work involves a genuinely sociological analysis of economic phenomena, Insofar as he applies his analytic framework - structured around the key concepts of field and habitus - to the economic sphere, showing that the market is the product of a social construction. As well as highlighting the social genesis of economic dispositions and describing the market as a Field of struggles where agents with different resources confront each Other, Bourdieu insists on the role of the State in regulating this market. In analyzing the economic sphere, lie makes use simultaneously of a sociology of knowledge and a political sociology. However, although a pioneering analysis of economic beliefs, Bourdieu's approach presents a series of limitations, including a certain ambiguity in relation to the motivations of modern economic agents and the delimitation of the economic sphere.