Confined in their governmental offices and with their eyes fixed on
the opinion polls, politicians and state officials are all too
often oblivious to the lives of their citizens. On the other hand,
the ordinary men and women who have so much hardship in their
lives, and so few means to make themselves heard, are obliged
either to protest outside the official frameworks or remain locked
in the silence of their despair.
Under the direction of Pierre Bourdieu, a team of sociologists
spent three years analysing the new forms of social suffering that
characterize contemporary societies - the suffering of those who
are denied the means of acquiring a socially dignified existence,
as well as the suffering of those who are poorly adjusted to the
rapidly changing social and economic conditions of their
lives.
Declining housing estates, the school, the family, street-level
state services, the everyday world of social workers, teachers and
policemen, factory workers and white-collar clerks, the universe of
small farmers and artisans, of teachers and of the unemployed and
partly employed: these are just some of the spaces where conflict
occurs, where specific discriminations and recriminations, tensions
and contradictions, abound and accumulate, and where new forms of
suffering are produced and experienced by ordinary people in the
course of their daily lives.
This book can be read like a series of short stories - the story
of a steel worker who was laid off after twenty years in the same
factory and who now struggles to support his family on unemployment
benefits and a part-time job; the story of a trade unionist who
finds his goals undermined by the changing nature of work; thestory
of a family from Algeria living in a housing estate in the
outskirts of Paris whose members have to cope with pervasive,
everyday forms of racism; the story of a school teacher confronted
with urban violence; and many others as well. Reading these stories
enables one to understand these people's lives and the forms of
social suffering which are part of them. And the reader will see
that this book offers not only a distinctive method for analysing
social life, but also another way of practising politics.
The publication of this book was a major social and political
event in France, where it topped the best-seller list and triggered
a wide-ranging public debate on inequality, politics and social
solidarity. It will be essential reading for all those - including
social scientists, educators, social and political activists and
ordinary citizens - who are concerned about the current state of
contemporary societies.
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