Masculine domination is so anchored in our social practices and our
unconscious that we hardly perceive it; it is so much in line with our
expectations that we find it difficult to call into question. Pierre
Bourdieu's analysis of Kabyle society provides instruments to help us
understand the most concealed aspects of the relations between the sexes
in our own societies, and to break the bonds of deceptive familiarity
that tie us to our own tradition. Bourdieu analyzes masculine domination
as a prime example of symbolic violence--the kind of gentle, invisible,
pervasive violence exercised through the everyday practices of social
life. To understand this form of domination we must also analyze the
social mechanisms and institutions--family, school, church, and
state--that transform history into nature and eternalize the arbitrary.
Only in this way can we open up the possibilities for a kind of
political action that can put history in motion again by neutralizing
the mechanisms that have naturalized and dehistoricized the relations
between the sexes. This new book by Pierre Bourdieu--which has been a
bestseller in France--will be essential reading for anyone concerned
with questions of gender and sexuality and with the structures that
shape our social, political, and personal lives.
