Abstract

The reception of Bourdieu in Italy, especially among sociologists, from 1966 till 2009, is here investigated with both published and personal documents. The article reconstructs the whole series of translations (articles and books), identifies the processes and mechanisms of introduction in Italy of a French scholar, and the modes of reading these processes activated among Italian social theorists and empirical researchers. Finally it tries to offer a structural explanation of the patterns of reception so identified through an interpretive model focused on the analysis of the genesis, structure and transformation of the Italian sociological field since the sixties. Ecological, network, organizational, and epistemological factors are highlighted. The paper contributes to the literature on intellectual reputation building as well as to the research on the international circulation of ideas with an empirical case study of intellectual marginalization in spite of an early and diffuse penetration.