Departing for field work in Sochaux with “Bourdieu in mind”

Abstract

The text tracks a long itinerary of research in which the authors worked mainly on a single informant, a militant factory worker in a French auto plant. The outcomes of the research are presented via both an account and a reflection - metholodological and theoretical - about the sociological making, the relationship between the researcher and the researched, the dilemmas and choices presented in order to capture an experience that is both individual and collective, all taken and inspired from the topics found in the works of Pierre Bourdieu. Among such topics are: the fieldwork as a tool for ethnography the representation of the popular classes, the question of the dominated culture and the social biography (and its limits). At the same the authors provide clues to what is specific and particular about their own work when facing to the work of Bourdieu.