Bourdieu Pierre. Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society

Stanford University Press, 1999. - 656 p.Under the direction of Pierre Bourdieu, France’s foremost sociologist, a team of 22 researchers spent three years studying and analyzing the new forces of social suffering that characterize contemporary societies - the daily suffering of those denied the means of acquiring a socially dignified existence and of those poorly adjusted to the rapidly changing conditions of their lives. Social workers, teachers, policemen, factory workers, white-collar clerks, farmers, artisans, shopkeepers - no one seems to be immune from the frustrations of today’s life, not to speak of the institutions of the family, work, and education.
The book can be read like a series of short stories, which include: a steel worker who was laid off after 20 years and now struggles to support his family on unemployment benefits and a part-time job; a trade unionist who finds his goals undermined by the changing nature of work; a family from Algeria living in a housing tract on the outskirts of Paris who must cope with pervasive forms of racism; and a schoolteacher confronted with urban violence. Reading these stories enables one to register these people’s lives and the forms of social suffering that infuse them.