A gênese social do homo-economicus: A Argélia e a sociologia da economia em Pierre Bourdieu

Abstract

The present article analyze P. Bourdieu's interest in economic questions, showing how this interest was present since the author's initial work - regarding the autochthonous population of Algeria's adaptation to capitalism - in which more elaborate forms of a sociology of the economy can already be found. In these works, which where anchored on simultaneous, research conducted regarding celibacy and the crisis of peasant reproduction in Bearn, P. Bourdieu's birth region, the author radically opposed neo-classical theoretical concepts. Bourdieu demonstrated that the most fundamental economic dispositions (needs, preferences, propensity towards work, savings or investment) where not exogenous, exposing the socio-historical conditions of rational economic behavior. These works are essential elements in the forging of an understanding of all of Bourdieu's later research. They are sources of the questions which will later be examined, matrixes of conceptual innovation and theoretical positions which will later be developed and affirmed.