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The Bachelors' Ball
The Crisis of Peasant Society in Bearn

Pierre Bourdieu (Author), Richard Nice (Translated by)

9780745630946, Polity Press

Hardback, published 23 May 2008

208 pages
25 x 10 x 1.5 cm, 0.68 kg

"Absolutely fundamental to any understanding of the development of Bourdieu's thought ... as insightful as it is moving."
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"Plunges us into fascinating details of the economics of dowries and animal husbandry."
Steven Poole's non-fiction choice in The Guardian

Continuing the theme of self-reflection, Bourdieu's final book, The Bachelors' Ball, sees him return to Béarn, the region in which he grew up, to examine the gender dynamics of rural France. This personal connection adds poignancy to Bourdieu's ethnographic account of the way the influence of urban values has precipitated a crisis for male peasants. Tied to the land through inheritance, these bachelors find themselves with little to offer the women of Bearn who, like the young Bourdieu himself, abandon the country for the city in droves.

Epigraph.

Introduction.

Part I –Bachelorhood and the peasant condition.

1. The system of matrimonial exchanges in traditional peasant society.

2. Internal contradictions and anomy.

3. The opposition between the bourg and the hameaux.

4. The peasant and his body.

Conclusion.

Appendix I.

Bibliographical notes.

Thematic bibliography.

Appendix II.

Changes in population, 1836-1954.

Appendix III.

Dialogue between a villager and a peasant.

Appendix IV.

Another dialogue between a villager and a bachelor.

Appendix V.

The exemplary tale of a younger son from a modest family.

Another younger son.

Appendix VI.

Excessive maternal authority and celibacy.

Appendix VII.

An attempt to generalize: bachelorhood in sixteen rural cantons in Brittany.

Part II – Matrimonial strategies in the system of reproduction strategies.

Bibliographical notes.

Bibliography.

Part III – Reproduction forbidden: The symbolic dimension of economic domination.

1. Addenda and corrigenda.

2. ‘From the closed world to the infinite universe’.

3. The unification of the matrimonial market.

4. ‘Sound opinions of the people’.

Appendix.

Postscript – A class as object.

Index of concepts.

Index of names

Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH]
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