As Bourdieu's reputation mounts, this collection seeks to evaluate his contribution. It is the first critical work to analyse his entire studies of the cultural field, the first to consider his revised theory of practice and the first to test his concepts in key new areas of socio–cultural research.These essays focus particularly on the cultural area. The book assembles a range of art historians and sociologists of culture who interrogate the value of Bourdieu's approach. Yet, since the mapping of the cultural cannot be divorced from wider aspects of Bourdieu's reflexive sociology, the book also contains sustained assessments of the claims of his socio–analysis. It considers these chiefly in the form of debates: between Bourdieu and Habermas or Bourdieu and Butler, for example. It further applies his distinctive concepts to new areas, such as the exploration of time, body and language within the context of Yorkshire working–class experience. Finally, it aims to illuminate Bourdieu's unusually wide range as an ethnographer and critical theorist, philosopher and sociologist and to assess the theories as working tools which have guided his distinctive project.