Research
The Fondation Bourdieu sees itself as a supporter and source of inspiration for current research on and with Pierre Bourdieu. Its focus is particularly on works on Bourdieu's photographic practice, the visual design of his academic publications—for example, in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales —and the role of images in his sociological cognitive processes.
If you are pursuing a related research project and would like to share it with an interested professional audience, please contact us at fondation.p.bourdieu@gmail.com We would be happy to include your project on our "Ongoing Research" page.
Ongoing research
DFG Project II (2024-2027)
“Visualizing Sociological Practice: Montage Techniques and Text-Image Compositions in Pierre Bourdieu’s Research Workshop”
by Franz Schultheis, Charlotte Hüser & Lilli Kim Schreiber
(Foto: ARSS-Cover 1975-1979)
The DFG-funded research project (2025–2028) builds on a previous project (2020–2022) that examined the role of photography in Pierre Bourdieu's sociological practice. While the first project focused on Bourdieu's photographic work during his fieldwork in Algeria (1958–1961)—particularly on photography as an epistemic tool for analyzing social reality—the follow-up project focuses on a previously little-researched, central dimension of his work: the visual design of his academic publications after the conclusion of his fieldwork.
The focus is on the journal Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (ARSS), founded by Bourdieu in 1975. Its innovative combination of text and image is analyzed as a methodological ensemble of sociological knowledge production. Here, Bourdieu developed a distinctive form of text-image dialogue characterized by a systematic, theoretically reflected, and empirically embedded integration of visual elements. Photographs, tables, diagrams, maps, collages, and so-called encadrés function not as illustrative accessories, but as integral components of the argument. This visual strategy serves to visualize cognitive processes, performatively convey empirical complexity, and challenge traditional hierarchies between text and image.
The starting point for the analysis is the first five years of the ARSS (1975–1979), in which visual forms were particularly intensively used. Using selected case studies, the image-text compositions are examined as independent forms of knowledge: What design principles underlie them? How do they contribute to argumentation? And to what extent do they reflect Bourdieu's claim for an engaged, reflexive, and transdisciplinary sociology? The goal is to reconstruct the visual logic of this methodological innovation and explore its significance for current debates on sociological knowledge production.​
Humboldt Project ( Zeppelin University )
“An Analysis of the Institutional Exhibition Practice of Pierre Bourdieu’s Algerian Photographs: In the Tension Between Memory Carrier, Ethnographic Source, and Aesthetic Interpretation”
by Lilli Kim Schreiber
This comparative study examines how international cultural institutions have institutionally framed, interpreted, and publicly presented Pierre Bourdieu's photographs of Algeria, taken between 1958 and 1961, since 2003. The focus is on the question of how these photographs are positioned in exhibition practice as cultural heritage and vehicles of anti-colonial cultural dialogue from a staging, interpretative, mediating, and cultural-political perspective. As part of a Humboldt research project at Zeppelin University, four transnationally curated exhibitions are examined using a qualitatively developed comparative scheme based on qualitative content analysis. Methodologically, the study is based on a preparatory grounded theory approach in order to identify patterns of interpretation, curatorial strategies, and tensions between art, ethnography, and collective memory as a field of cultural-political negotiation. Curatorial materials such as flyers, catalogs, online texts, press reports, and archival sources are analyzed; the corpus is supplemented by participant observations and self-reflective notes. The results are incorporated into an auto-analytical reflection that materializes in a separate exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld—an attempt at objectification and an experimental space that translates research-based findings into curatorial practice. The study closes a research gap by highlighting the hitherto little-explored staging and cultural-political dimensions of Bourdieu's photographic practice. The aim is to critically reflect on institutional interpretation strategies and classify them in terms of cultural policy – not as normative recommendations for action, but as an impulse for dealing with Bourdieu's work in the field of tension between visual sociology, postcolonial discourse, and memory politics.
Humboldt Project ( Zeppelin University )
“An Analysis of the Institutional Exhibition Practice of Pierre Bourdieu’s Algerian Photographs: In the Tension Between Memory Carrier, Ethnographic Source, and Aesthetic Interpretation”
by Lilli Kim Schreiber
This comparative study examines how international cultural institutions have institutionally framed, interpreted, and publicly presented Pierre Bourdieu's photographs of Algeria, taken between 1958 and 1961, since 2003. The focus is on the question of how these photographs are positioned in exhibition practice as cultural heritage and vehicles of anti-colonial cultural dialogue from a staging, interpretative, mediating, and cultural-political perspective. As part of a Humboldt research project at Zeppelin University, four transnationally curated exhibitions are examined using a qualitatively developed comparative scheme based on qualitative content analysis. Methodologically, the study is based on a preparatory grounded theory approach in order to identify patterns of interpretation, curatorial strategies, and tensions between art, ethnography, and collective memory as a field of cultural-political negotiation. Curatorial materials such as flyers, catalogs, online texts, press reports, and archival sources are analyzed; the corpus is supplemented by participant observations and self-reflective notes. The results are incorporated into an auto-analytical reflection that materializes in a separate exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld—an attempt at objectification and an experimental space that translates research-based findings into curatorial practice. The study closes a research gap by highlighting the hitherto little-explored staging and cultural-political dimensions of Bourdieu's photographic practice. The aim is to critically reflect on institutional interpretation strategies and classify them in terms of cultural policy – not as normative recommendations for action, but as an impulse for dealing with Bourdieu's work in the field of tension between visual sociology, postcolonial discourse, and memory politics.
Ongoing research
Humboldt Project ( Zeppelin University )
“An Analysis of the Institutional Exhibition Practice of Pierre Bourdieu’s Algerian Photographs: In the Tension Between Memory Carrier, Ethnographic Source, and Aesthetic Interpretation”
by Lilli Kim Schreiber
Exhibition at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2025)
This comparative study examines how international cultural institutions have institutionally framed, interpreted, and publicly presented Pierre Bourdieu's photographs of Algeria, taken between 1958 and 1961, since 2003. The focus is on the question of how these photographs are positioned in exhibition practice as cultural heritage and vehicles of anti-colonial cultural dialogue from a staging, interpretative, mediating, and cultural-political perspective. As part of a Humboldt research project at Zeppelin University, four transnationally curated exhibitions are examined using a qualitatively developed comparative scheme based on qualitative content analysis. Methodologically, the study is based on a preparatory grounded theory approach in order to identify patterns of interpretation, curatorial strategies, and tensions between art, ethnography, and collective memory as a field of cultural-political negotiation. Curatorial materials such as flyers, catalogs, online texts, press reports, and archival sources are analyzed; the corpus is supplemented by participant observations and self-reflective notes. The results are incorporated into an auto-analytical reflection that materializes in a separate exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld—an attempt at objectification and an experimental space that translates research-based findings into curatorial practice. The study closes a research gap by highlighting the hitherto little-explored staging and cultural-political dimensions of Bourdieu's photographic practice. The aim is to critically reflect on institutional interpretation strategies and classify them in terms of cultural policy – not as normative recommendations for action, but as an impulse for dealing with Bourdieu's work in the field of tension between visual sociology, postcolonial discourse, and memory politics.
DFG Project I1 (2019-2022)
"Photography as an instrument, method and form of knowledge in sociological research in Pierre Bourdieu"
by Franz Schultheis, Stephan Egger, Charlotte Hüser & Lilli Kim Schreiber
Exhibition at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2025)
In einem Essay aus dem Jahre 1974 schreibt Howard Becker: „Sociologists today know little of the work of social documentary photographers and its relevance to what they do. They seldom use photographs as a way of gathering, recording or presenting data and conclusions.” Becker konnte nicht wissen, dass Pierre Bourdieu genau dies bereits Ende der 1950er-Jahre systematisch praktizierte. Während seiner algerischen Feldforschungen produziert Bourdieu einige tausend fotografische Dokumente, die er über viele Jahrzehnte als eine Quelle seiner Studien nutzen sollte. Fotografie diente ihm sowohl als Instrument, Methode und Erkenntnismittel seines Forschens und wurde dann zum Ausgangspunkt einer sukzessiven Ausweitung seiner „visuellen Soziologie” auf den Bereich der Forschung „über” Fotografie in seiner bekannten Studie Eine illegitime Kunst bis hin zum ausgiebigen und systematischen Einsatz visueller Dokumente in seiner Revue Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales oder Werken wie Die feinen Unterschiede. Bourdieu bedient sich im Laufe seiner Karriere eines Rückgriffs „auf visuelle Aussageformationen“, der in seiner Breite und Vielfalt in der Soziologie einzigartig sein dürfte. Er nutzt die Fotografie systematisch als Teil seiner Forschungskonzepte zur Beobachtung, Beschreibung und Analyse gesellschaftlicher Phänomene und setzt sie konsequent als Instrumente wissenschaftlicher Forschung ein. Dadurch erweitert er das Forschungs- und Methodenrepertoire der Sozialwissenschaften um originär empirisch-fotografische Bildpraktiken. Umso mehr überrascht es, dass diese visuelle Komponente des Bourdieuschen Werks bis heute noch nicht angemessen gewürdigt wurde. Hauptgrund für dieses Manko dürfte sein, dass bisher nur ein Bruchteil des Bourdieuschen Fotoarchivs öffentlich zugänglich ist und dessen wissenschaftliche Sichtung inklusive einer inhaltlichen Aufbereitung und Veröffentlichung noch aussteht. Aus unserer Sicht wäre die Schließung dieser Lücke einerseits von großem Interesse für ein adäquate Rezeption der Bourdieuschen Forschungspraxis und Theoriebildung: Insofern die Fotografie ihm als wesentlicher Zugang zu einer Objektivierung sozialer Wirklichkeit diente, eröffnet sich hier die Möglichkeit, die für sein Werk kennzeichnende intensive Verschränkung visueller und diskursiver Zugänge im Detail zu rekonstruieren. Von besonderem Interesse wäre hier, den Anteil der visuellen Soziologie Bourdieus an der Ausarbeitung zentraler Konzepte wie „Habitus“, „symbolisches Kapital“ oder „symbolische Gewalt“ zu rekonstruieren.Andererseits könnte eine wissenschaftlich fundierte Auseinandersetzung mit der visuellen Soziologie Bourdieus dazu dienen, den Gebrauch der Fotografie in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Praxis neu zu beleben. Bourdieus fotografisches Werk böte das erforderliche Potential an empirischer Fundierung, methodischer Stringenz und gesellschaftstheoretischer Reflexivität, um dies auf exemplarische Weise zu leisten.