The Plural Actor

"Lahire is disparaging of that 'umpteenth version of a theory of the free'; any feeling of freedom or ironic consciousness is simply the result of the complexity of that determination of whose actual weight individuals can have no practical intuition. But perhaps more than anything else, this book demonstrates the continuing validity and relevance - and for Bourdieuians 'more than ever' - of just such theories of freedom."
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"Congratulations to Bernard Lahire for opening a new window. With the decline of primordial thinking (stressing race, class, gender, and nationhood), heightened by globalization, he suggests how to see, and conceptualize, the social world in an open, pluralistic mode. He builds on tradition, milieu, and context, but shows how thinking, goals, and a plurality of values combine in what we do."
Terry Nichols Clark, University of Chicago