Abstract

Focusing on the case of Pierre Bourdieu, and as an introduction to a symposium devoted to his place worldwide, this paper offers some insights about the processes, mechanisms and temporalities in the international transfer of sociological ideas and of sociological authors. After a documented assessment of the raising status enjoyed worldwide by Bourdieu in contemporary social and human sciences, the paper advances some first hypothesis about the nature and patterns of this success which capitalize, critically, on Bourdieu's reflections about the social condition of the international circulation of ideas. Finally, the paper discusses three interwoven strategic areas to which a comparative study on the worldwide circulation of Bourdieu's ideas could contribute: the research on the translation and transnationalization of knowledge, the sociology of sociology (in terms of both reflexivity and the spatial and social organization of the discipline), and the sociology of intellectual legitimation and of ideas.