Writing like a Bourdieusian Scholar: From The Craft of Sociology to the Writing Patterns in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales

Abstract

This paper is a debate on why Bourdieusian scholars have never fully embraced the “Introduction/Literature review/Data & methods/Results/Discussion” (ILDRD) article format which is mainstream in North American Sociological publications. This paper attempts to argue that Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Chamboredon, and Jean-Claude Passeron developed a different writing format – inspired by Gaston Bachelard's “applied rationalism” -- and which became more influential among French scholars. The Bourdieu inspired different writing patterns and reasoning, I argue, can be traced in the flagship journal Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales. This paper invites further debate on the differences in approaching article formats in the social sciences.