"I got to know Bourdieu because when I got accepted in the CNRS, they decide to put me
in a Research Centre, which was Raymond Aron’s Research Centre, the Centre de Sociologie
Européenne, which was headed by Raymond Aron.
But Raymond Aron said, “No, I’m not in sociology, I’m in international relations.
But I have with me this young man, Pierre Bourdieu, who is really a good sociologist,
so he will teach you the trade"".
But it did not happen, actually.
It did not happen because Bourdieu was a very special kind of person, very charismatic kind
of guru.
He had his first circle of close-by students, which were completely devoted to him, which
were [representing] him in all various things he was doing...
Then there was a second circle of students who knew all his works, but they were not
accepted as [being] loyal perhaps.
And then there was the other people.
So I was part of the other people.
And, of course, the game was to try to get into the second circle somehow.
But I had no training, I had no training in philosophy.
Later on, when I left that Centre after two years waiting for Bourdieu to call me, and
nothing happening, so I left...
" "I will just finish with the story of this
café conversation, where he explained to me why he did not try, or he did not decide
to train me, to begin the training.
But he said that although I was going to a Research Centre headed by a rival of him,
by Raymond Boudon, and he said to me, “But I don’t - je ne vous en veux pas - I’m
not cross against you, because you have been loyal to me”.
Which was a very strange sentence for me, ""Vous êtes restés loyal"", I could not
make sense of that sentence for years.
[In retrospect] it seems kind of mafiosi sentence, it’s a mafiosi culture.
Loyalty to the boss is the most important virtue, quality, and you have to respect the
boss, you have to be loyal, in all circumstances.
And that was the game at the time.
It was war, open war, between the four – Bourdieu, Boudon, Touraine and everyone had been through
the Ecole Normale, the same school, the same primary schools, and Michel Crozier, who was
the fourth one.
He was from Science Pol, but he had carved himself a good part about sociology of organisation,
sociological organisation.
And the four, those four were really a gang of four.
The gang of four was an expression with the Chinese Cultural Revolution...
" The situation was like this.
The French society was very much backwards...
It has to be modernised, the great word of the time - “modernisation”.
It had to be changed...
And in order to change all these institutions, one would have to study what was blocking
change – “change” was a great word.
And for this, they needed sociologists.
So, for the first time in the history of France, the State itself, the government, the authority,
the state authority, understood that there was a need for sociological studies, sociological
research.
And they propose an enormous amount of money to scholars.